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THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

AND THE PART PLAYED BY ORGANIZED MEDICINE

THE
EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

AND THE PART PLAYED BY ORGANIZED MEDICINE

by
CHARLES TABER STOUT

NEW YORK

MITCHELL KENNERLEY

MCMXXI

M

COPYRIGHT 192 1 BY
MITCHELL KENNERLEY ^

J

MAR 30 1922

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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES

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PREFACE

The first pages of this book were included in a
paper written as a protest against the candidacy of
a regular Army officer who was seeking the nom-
ination of one of the great parties for the office of
President of the United States. This general officer
had entered the Army through the medical branch
of the service and still maintained his membership
in the medical organization, which expected to avail
itself of his Administration (if that ever became a
reality) to push its special legislative programme.
Ten days after the protest referred to reached its
destination, together with the protests of others,
an inquiry as to the source of the candidate's cam-
paign fund was begun in the Senate. That investi-
gation ended his presidential aspirations.

With this inception, the book has been continued
and completed in order to draw public attention to
a question of national concern — the real meaning of
the prohibition movement, and its relations to Or-
ganized Medicine and other interests. Under the
guise of altruism, a grave injustice has been imposed
upon a free people by a relatively small number of
zealots and profiteers. It seems important, there-
fore, that the public should know the facts.

C. T. S.

INTRODUCTION

Like many others, I used to look upon prohibition
as a dream of the idealist. It was a dream with
which I was not particularly concerned. My ideas
on the whole subject were rather vague, like the ideas
of most people on most subjects of importance; but
I believed in a general way that the removal of in-
toxicating liquors from ordinary use would be a good
thing for the country. The harm which alcohol had
done and was doing was quite obvious. Like others,
I had seen lives ruined by over-indulgence and homes
broken up. I had drawn what seemed natural con-
clusions from casual observation and reflection. But
when I began to give the question serious considera-
tion, I had to admit that I really knew nothing about
prohibition, good or bad. I had certain impres-
sions, which might be justifiable or otherwise. That
was all; and it was not enough.

I began to read some of the literature on the
subject. One of the first books which came to my
attention was Dr. Eugene Lyman Fisk's "Alcohol
— Its Relation to Human Efficiency and Longevity."
Many of his statements conflicted with the opinions

viii INTRODUCTION

I had formed in the loose way just described. The
book, however, was persuasive, and I read it through
a second time. After this second perusal I became
skeptical; and I then read it once more, critically,
checking up the various statements, with the result
that I had to discard many of them as worthless.
I do not mean to question Dr. Fisk's sincerity, of
course; but apparently, as in the case of so many
of our scientists, his field of observation has been
distinctly limited. The impression which I received
from the book was that if the prohibitionists were
obliged to resort to propaganda such as this, there
must be something wrong with their cause.

I went over the matter with others. They became
interested, and we traced some of the propaganda
down to its sources. What had been at first merely
curious inquiry soon developed into an absorbing
study, not only of the theories of the prohibitionists,
but also of the forces behind the movement. The
moral plea on which prohibition was originally put
forward had now been subordinated to the question
of health. The American Medical Association had
joined the ranks of the anti-alcoholists and had
passed a resolution condemning alcohol both as a
food and a medicine. We followed the activities
of the association through its various channels of
influence. The trail led from one of the great medi-
cal institutions to another, until it finally brought up

INTRODUCTION ix

in the medical departments of the national gov-
ernment.

The aged fisherman of the Arabian Nights could
not have been more astonished when he removed the
seal of Solomon from the mouth of the jar which his
net had brought to the surface, and saw the genie
issue forth, than we were at the result of our in-
vestigations. We found a giant organization oc-
cupying the centre of the stage. Torn by factions
within, pressed on all sides by virile foes without,
it was turning and twisting, grasping at any weapon
which would preserve its life for even a short time
longer. It was medievalism struggling against the
advance of civilization. We found, indeed, more
than the power behind prohibition itself; we found
the reason why disease has been able to flourish in
spite of all that science has accomplished for its
control. We found men of international reputation
in the world of medicine prostituting their profes-
sion, and forgetting their personal honor, to main-
tain an organization which has long outlived its
usefulness and which has no place in a civilized
community in a modern age.

There is but one excuse for prohibition, and that
is ignorance. Is the ignorance displayed by our
medical authorities on the subject of alcohol real
or assumed? Do they sincerely believe, or merely
pretend to believe, that prohibition will mean an

x INTRODUCTION

improvement in the health of the people? The
question is on a par with another one which has
been asked rather frequently: Did the Inquisitors
of the Middle Ages believe that the rack and the
fagot would advance the cause of truth, or did a
certain proportion of them, at least, employ these
unpleasant arguments mainly to further their own
interests and protect their special organization?

Some light on the first question, at any rate, should
be found in the ensuing pages.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTION vii

I THE ISSUE 9

II THE MORAL PLEA FAILS 13

III THE HEALTH PLEA 17

IV ORGANIZED MEDICINE 22
V THE SERUM CONTROVERSY 3o

VI A NEW FACTOR 35

VII THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CHEMOTHERAPY 41

VIII A PROFITABLE PARTNERSHIP 46

IX THE OTHER PARTNERS 50

X SOME PROHIBITION PROPAGANDA 59

XI ALCOHOL AND LONGEVITY 69

XII MORE FALLACIOUS PROPAGANDA 75

XIII THE LABORATORY vs. NATURE 84

XIV THE FOOD VALUE OF ALCOHOL 97
XV ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE 104

XVI ALCOHOL AND FATIGUE 113

XVII FATIGUE AND DISEASE 123

XVIII THE ECONOMIC SIDE OF PROHIBITION 130

XIX THE LAW AND PERSONAL LIBERTY I49

XX THE LABOR UNION 159

XXI ENFORCEMENT 167

XXII GOVERNMENT BY PROPAGANDA? 187

XXIII THE WAY OUT 192

XXIV CONCLUSION 206
INDEX 213

THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

AND THE PART PLAYED BY ORGANIZED MEDICINE

For John the Baptist came neither eating
bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath
a devil.

The Son of Man is come eating and drink-
ing; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man,
and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and
sinners.

St. Luke, vii : 33, 34.

THE
EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

CHAPTER I , .

THE ISSUE

America has embarked upon a great experiment,
the elimination of alcoholic beverages from her na-
tional diet. The fact that wine has had its recog-
nized place in the human economy from time im-
memorial seemed a matter of small consequence to
the theorists who championed the prohibition move-
ment. There were certain manifest evils con-
nected with alcohol, therefore alcohol must go.
And alcohol has gone, to a large extent. True, it
still lingers in the homes of the rich and the provi-
dent; poisonous substitutes are being purveyed at
fantastic prices by bootleggers, saloon keepers and
other profiteers ; and the home-brewer is warming to
his work and gradually learning the secrets of suc-
cess. But the old order has certainly changed,
yielding place to new. Is the new, however, better
than the old, or is it fundamentally vicious?

9

io THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

Whenever we interfere with natural laws or es-
tablished custom, trouble is to be expected; and
whether expected or not, it will come. It is safer
to build our houses, and even our ultra-modern
skyscrapers, from the foundation upward rather
than from the skyline downward; or the downward
will be very clearly accentuated. But in these days
of unrest, "try anything once" seems to have become
the maxim of the advanced thinkers who would guide
mankind to the great visionary higher level.

There has never been a time in the history of the
world when the theorist was more in evidence. The
wonderful progress seen everywhere in the arts and
sciences during the present generation has encour-
aged theoretical speculation. The hypotheses of
yesterday are the inventions and discoveries of to-
day, by which the earth, the sea, the air have been
brought under man's dominion. Success has bred
a carelessness, even a contempt, for nature's laws,
until we now find those who are willing to believe
that the very laws of life itself can be disregarded.
At the risk of platitude, it is just as well to state a
simple truism: It is not by ignoring natural laws
that man has triumphed, but by understanding them ;
not by denying, but by observing them.

The shallow theorist, the bigot or the misguided
moralist may become a source of serious danger to
a community. There is no more perilous element

THE ISSUE n

in society than the fanatics who really believe in
their fallacies, unless it be those who are willing
to exploit their false doctrines for profit. "Uplift"
is being used more and more frequently to disguise
personal interest. It is time that people should be-
gin to think for themselves, for they are being ex-
ploited in a way which has become a menace to popu-
lar government. With the spread of education, or
rather the ability to read and write, the dissemina-
tion of false doctrines has become increasingly easy.
The prohibition movement offers one of the most
conspicuous examples.

The fate of the Eighteenth Amendment in the
Supreme Court cannot be allowed to end the contro-
versy. There is more than a legal principle in-
volved: there is the vital question whether a nation
can defy the laws of nature and still maintain its
economic position. And with this there are the con-
nected issues, the health, happiness and freedom of
action of the American people.

It must be remembered that the Supreme Court
can only pass upon a case as presented. Unfortu-
nately the real issue, the interest of the public in
(and so intimately depending upon) the question,
has never had a hearing. It has been a character-
istic feature of the prohibition propaganda to pre-
sent the controversy in a misleading aspect, and to
make it appear a conflict between temperance on

12 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

the one side and the liquor interests on the other.
A careful consideration of the subject from the eco-
nomic standpoint is not desired. Any attempt to
turn on the light has been met by the Anti-Saloon
League — the stalking horse of the real interests be-
hind the movement — by raising the bugaboo of the
liquor trade. The liquor traffic as it once was, and
the true and continuing relation of alcohol to the
human system, are two very different things.

The public's interest in the case can be simply
stated, and it is doubtful whether any court — except
the final court of appeal of the whole people — has
the power, or is competent, to pass on the question :
Is alcohol necessary either as a food or a medicine
for our individual or national well-being?

CHAPTER II

THE MORAL PLEA FAILS

There are two aspects from which prohibition
may be considered : the physical side, its effect on the
health of the nation, or as Dr. Fisk phrases it, "its
relation to human efficiency and longevity"; and
the ethical side, its influence on national morals.
After all, our morals are in a way but a higher sani-
tary code, for we have been put on this earth pre-
sumably to do appropriate work — God's work, in
no canting sense — and moral guidance is to the end
that we shall be fit in mind and body to carry on
this work and assist our neighbors in the perform-
ance of their share, to the mutual welfare of all.

The morals, as commonly understood, of the
Western nations are rooted in the law of Moses
and the teachings of Christ. The miracles, sacra-
ments and revelations of the Christian and Jewish
religions alike are opposed to prohibition. It is
difficult to see how any moral ground can be as-
serted for this fetich unless we are ready to dis-
card the clear guidance of both the Old and New
Testaments. Nothing could be plainer than Christ's
acceptance of wine in the institution of the Blessed

13

i4 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

Sacrament, the miracle at Cana of Galilee, and his
teaching in the city called Nain. The Christian re-
ligion preaches temperance, not prohibition. There
is no Christian virtue, nor any other kind of virtue,
in a self-denial that is enforced by a prison cell or
moral straitjacket. If the Church had had the
disposal of the immense sum by which prohibition
was purchased, were there not vital purposes in ac-
cordance (not at variance) with Christ's teaching,
for which the money could have been well spent? Is
total abstinence so paramount that the Church is
willing to subordinate everything else for this one
aim, — or are we now practising evangelism inten-
sively, virtue by virtue ?

The law of Moses is accepted by both the Chris-
tian and the Jew as essentially the revelation of God.
It has an important bearing on the subject not only
morally, but physically also. There may be some
who doubt the divine origin of the Hebrew laws,
but they cannot question the historical fact that under
these laws the people rose from a condition of
slavery to the glory of a great nation under Solomon.

For four hundred and thirty years the Israelites
had lived in Egypt. Generation after generation
had been born in slavery, the burdens of their Egyp-
tian taskmasters pressing harder and harder upon
the subject race. Everything possible was done to
break their spirit, even to the murder of their male

THE MORAL PLEA FAILS 15

children. Moses was called upon to lead his rescued
people to the Land of Promise and take possession
of a country already inhabited by warlike tribes.
A long period of preparation was necessary to fit
the wanderers for their task. During the pilgrim-
age a new generation was born free from the demor-
alizing influence of slavery, and trained under laws
of morality and health which have become the foun-
dation of our civilization.

The law of Moses deals distinctly with the use
of alcohol, in the form of wine. In the directions
for the harvest it divided the product of the vine-
yard in the same manner that the grain of the field
was apportioned. The first share was for a drink
offering to the Lord. After that came the share
of the owner of the vineyard. The third share was
reserved for the poor as a necessary food. There
is no hesitation or hypocrisy here. Wine is dedi-
cated both to the glory of God and to the natural
use of all the people.

So much, briefly, for the religious aspect of the
question. The prohibitionists cannot base any legit-
imate arguments on the Christian or Mosaic dis-
pensations.

Alcohol is a food in the broad sense, because un-
der certain conditions it may be essential for the
proper nourishment of the body. The alcoholic
craving has its foundation in normal requirements.

1 6 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

This, together with the fact that alcohol is a free
gift of nature, will make it impossible to suppress
its use by prohibitory laws. The passage of the
Eighteenth Amendment has not changed the human
system: it has merely put back the cause of tem-
perance a hundred and fifty years. Anyone can
make alcohol. Indeed, in many of the products of
the kitchen, where sugars and acids are combined,
the housewife must exercise the greatest care to
avoid making it. The American people had become
accustomed to buying their alcoholic beverages ready
made. The manufacture was in the hands of a very
small percentage of the population and so was easily
regulated. The Eighteenth Amendment has changed
all this. America is fast becoming an. immense
brewery. The relation between supply and demand
is not a matter of fiat, but of fact. The substitu-
tion, however, of tyros for experts in brewing and
distilling, and of compulsory stealth for natural free-
dom, can scarcely be considered an improvement.
Still, experience teaches; the novice becomes an
adept, even under unpleasant conditions. There will
be more and better illicit alcohol as time goes by.

The use of alcohol may be regulated, but not
prohibited. So far from improving the morals of
the people, prohibition will only increase hypocrisy
and graft. There is not much doubt about this, for
it has already happened.

CHAPTER III

THE HEALTH PLEA

Prohibition failed as a moral issue because the
two great American religions were traditionally op-
posed to it. Something new had to be tried, and the
success of the dry movement in certain Southern
states offered a suggestion. Prohibition had made
headway there because it was distinctly to the ad-
vantage of the South to remove temptation from the
negro race. Self-interest is a powerful entering
wedge for any argument, and the leaders of the dry
campaign began a survey of the country in an effort
to find interests which coincided with their own and
which they could utilize.

Of course, the soft drink manufacturers were not
overlooked. But while they might prove helpful
from the financial standpoint later on, they were
unorganized and of little influence in the country,
and the selfish viewpoint would be altogether too
obvious. However, three great and thoroughly
systematized interests were found in receptive mood :
the American Medical Association, the Life Insur-
ance Companies, and the Standard Oil Company.

17

1 8 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

There were also certain other large corporations
whose efficiency experts had been able to show that
alcohol was increasing the cost of labor.

The American Medical Association maintained
the most powerful trained lobby in the country. As
far back as 1907 the association had an agent in
each of the 2,830 counties of the United States,
and its list of approachable political leaders num-
bered 16,000. Its interest was so distinctly on the
side of prohibition that it has become the great
power behind the movement. The financial backing
of the other organizations was naturally of great
importance. In addition, the life insurance com-
panies were able to furnish valuable statistics, and
the private charities of the Rockefellers offered a
convenient cloak. How much the latter were in-
fluenced by their relations with Organized Medicine
it is impossible to say. But the plea of health and
human efficiency was given the premier position in
the propaganda for prohibition.

In enlisting medicine in their cause the dry party
acquired one of the most powerful agencies in our
modern life, the influence of the family physician.
In many a home in America this is a greater con-
tinuous force than any other. There are many
stories to illustrate the doctor's prestige, but one will
suffice.

Tucked away in the hills of New England is a

THE HEALTH PLEA 19

little village, the summer home of two intimate
friends. As boys they had left this same village to
make their way in the world beyond. They had been
schoolmates together, and later on attended the
same college. They were both interested in the same
sports and pursuits, and the boyish friendship grew
and ripened with the years. One of them took up
the study of medicine; the other went into business
and afterwards married. In the course of events a
child was born, and who more fitting to attend at
that critical period than the friend whom the father
had learned to trust since boyhood? Other chil-
dren came, and the physician, then a rising prac-
titioner, cared for them through the illnesses of
childhood, and the children learned to trust their
father's friend. And finally there came a time when
the doctor was called upon to share in the family's
affliction. The wife and mother, through an un-
fortunate accident, was injured beyond the curative
power of any physician. But day and night he
watched at her bedside, alleviating pain wherever
possible and giving the immeasurable comfort of his
presence and skill. If anything could add to that
household's love and respect, it was his sympathy
with their loss, his comprehension of their grief.

You may wonder, perhaps, as to the precise ap-
plication of this episode. It is given here because

20 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

it is typical, not merely individual; because there
are thousands of similar cases throughout America.
Think of what that must mean; the enormous influ-
ence exerted by such physicians amongst the mem-
bers of innumerable families. And this influence,
in itself so natural and splendid, is being exploited
in a partisan cause and for special and specious in-
terests. The general practitioner himself has not
much choice in the matter. It is difficult for him to
oppose for any length of time the settled policy of
his professional organization. It is almost impos-
sible for him to remain in the association and defy
its crushing disciplinary powers, open and covert.
He can try to do so, of course, if he chooses. Others
have sometimes made the attempt, — and sometimes
regretted it. As an alternative, the practitioner may
resign his membership in the association and be-
come an "outlaw." But that involves a new profes-
sional outlook, the severance of old ties, the up-
rooting of fixed habits, and an absolutely fresh start.
Besides, he has still to face the resentment of the or-
ganization, which does not readily forget; and there
is no efficient outlaw organization to which he can
turn for protection. It is not surprising, then, that
the harassed practitioner, when he differs from the
views of the authorities, should decide to feign an
acquiescence that he does not feel. Only the prom-

THE HEALTH PLEA 21

inent and pushing — the leaders of cliques and fac-
tions— have the privilege of self-assertion in medical
circles. The rank and file have to be content with
obedience, or the black list.

CHAPTER IV

ORGANIZED MEDICINE

To understand the recent opposition of Or-
ganized Medicine to alcohol, it will be necessary
to trace the development of this great power through
its earlier stages, describing in some detail the vari-
ous incidents and influences which have led up to
the present situation. Many of them are extremely
instructive.

Beginning in a small way, in the meetings of the
town and county medical societies for the discussion
of scientific matters or social betterment, a huge
organization has been built up. Gradually, the
agents of this organization have obtained positions
of importance in the various institutions and estab-
lishments concerned with the national health, until
finally they have taken over the complete control of
our medical departments, both state and federal.

Before the days of Pasteur the science of medicine
was little more than a mosaic of superstition. The
physician had learned to recognize certain diseases
and often obtained definite results in treatment, but
the causes of disease, its progress and the reactions

22

ORGANIZED MEDICINE 23

of the body, were obscured. Of all the applied sci-
ences, medicine was the most backward. With the
discovery of germ life, and its relation to pathogeny,
a new era commenced. One after another, the or-
ganisms which are the cause of our various diseases
were isolated. And this knowledge was closely
followed by the discovery of the curative forces, of
the body itself. A wonderful and supremely im-
portant field of research was opening before the
eyes of the scientific world.

No one can take even a casual glance into the
maze of serum therapy without being impressed by
its intricacies and the tremendous amount of labor
necessary for its exploration. Especially is this true
of the body's own curative forces. Little by little,
and only after the most painstaking research, was
the knowledge of these forces obtained, one truth,
found after years of study and experiment, leading
on to another until finally nature's marvellous mech-
anism was revealed in its entirety.

This work was accomplished by the scientists of
Europe. The names of Pasteur, Metchnikoff, Bor-
det, Ehrlich, Behring, Pfeiffer, Wright and Douglas,
will always be associated with the great achieve-
ment. The fact that America, though leading the
world in other lines of effort through the inventive
genius of her scientists and mechanicians, neverthe-
less played so inconsiderable a part in medical de-

24 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

velopment was due to the code of ethics originally
foisted upon American practitioners by their Euro-
pean brethren. Well-meaning in principle, this code
was fatal in practice. It was found depressing even
in the environment of its birth. Here, it was im-
possible.

The economic situation was an important factor.
America was then in the midst of a tremendous in-
dustrial boom. The great corporations were offer-
ing large financial inducements for the best brains
that the country could produce. The natural law
of supply and demand will apply whether the com-
modity is the brains of a scientist or a sack of pota-
toes. The medical code required — and still re-
quires— that any discovery or invention for the more
effective treatment of disease should be given to the
world for its free use. It is this old world theory,
denying the right of the skilled practitioner to the
product of his labor, which has done more than any-
thing else to retard the advance of medicine in the
United States. Deprived of its legitimate rewards
in the medical field, genius was inevitably diverted
into other channels. There was too much competi-
tion for it to remain where it would only stultify
itself. The laborer is worthy of his hire, and for
priceless labor it seems rather ironic to receive no
price at all.

I have recently had an opportunity of discussing

ORGANIZED MEDICINE 25

this question with a bacteriologist of international
reputation. In explaining his point of view he told
the following story. When Behring perfected his
antitoxin for diphtheria, he attempted to patent
it. He was prevented from doing so because his
colleagues did not think, in view of the work which
others had done and by which he had profited, that
he alone should reap the reward; for although they
had failed, his success was built upon foundations
which they had established. If a reward was to be
given it should be distributed among all (or on be-
half of all), living or dead, who had contributed to
his final triumph. That may seem to some a counsel
of perfection; to me it seems simply a plea of in-
eptitude. Our civilization would be in a curious
state if the creators of our steam engines and auto-
mobiles had been denied patents, because someone
in a prehistoric age had used the wheel on the ox-
cart; or if perfecting the open-hearth furnace had
brought no reward from the steel industry because
some antediluvian ancestor had employed fire in
broiling a steak.

As a result of the success of the foreign investi-
gators, the practising physician became dependent
upon Europe for his medical knowledge. It must
be remembered that during this period the science
of medicine was making tremendous strides. More
was being accomplished than in all the years since

26 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

Hippocrates. Our institutions were kept busy test-
ing the theories of the European schools and passing
them on to the practitioners. These institutions
of research thus became clearing houses and dis-
tributing points for the new medical facts, and the
control of medicine centered in the hands of the few
who were able to speak with authority. With such
a foundation it was a comparatively easy matter to
build up a political machine whose power has never
been exceeded, unless by the religious organizations
of the Middle Ages.

And then occurred the very thing which the code
of medical ethics was intended to prevent — the com-
mercializing of medical knowledge. Our medical
authorities embarked upon the manufacture of the
newly discovered biological products, some openly,
others sub rosa through the medium of their more
venturesome associates. And although many of
these vaccines and serums proved complete failures,
they were marketed in large quantities.

With the completion of their organization, one of
the first movements undertaken by the medical ring
was a campaign against the patent medicines.
There had grown up in the country a great business,
the manufacture of nostrums. Some of these were
utterly worthless, others contained drugs which any-
one could procure from the corner pharmacy. They
were prepared in fancy packages, under high-sound-

ORGANIZED MEDICINE 27

ing titles, and sold to the credulous and unwary.
They had already been condemned by the practising
physician because in many instances the beneficial
effect was at best illusory, while they were often defi-
nitely detrimental either through harmful ingredients
or through the ignorance and improper use of the
buyers — "addicts" as many of them could justly
be called, for the patent medicine habit has a tend-
ency to become chronic. The campaign against these
nostrums unquestionably strengthened the hands of
the medical authorities, both with the sensible por-
tion of the lay public and with the general body
of practitioners, who naturally did not wish to see
their lawful practices thus cut into, to their own loss
and the manifest danger of their patients.

The campaign was conducted along two lines, the
education of the public and the passage of inhibitory
legislation. The association leaders attempted to
stop self-medication by making it necessary for the
layman to obtain a doctor's prescription before he
could purchase even the simplest form of drug.
Failing in this, they tried to force the publication
of the formulas of all proprietaries. The neces-
sary legislation was pushed in every state and in
Congress; the bills are part of our legislative rec-
ords. In this campaign we see the first leaning of
Organized Medicine towards prohibition. Speak-
ing before a meeting of the Women's Christian Tern-

28 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

perance Union at Nashville, Tennessee, the spokes-
man of the American Medical Association said:
"The average drug-store in the United States is little
more than a saloon for the sale of disguised alcohol
and 'dope' under the pretence of patent medicines."

The drive against the proprietary preparations
had a very important though unforeseen effect, and
the American practising physician became the chief
sufferer. The campaign was conducted on such
broad lines that not only was it directed against the
fake nostrum, but even the legitimate proprietary
was attacked. Improvement in drugs was thus dis-
couraged and the physician had to look for his medi-
cines to the countries, particularly Germany, whose
laws encouraged pharmaceutical chemistry.

This was not the only result. The propaganda
against drugs was pushed so vigorously that it be-
gan to create a doubt in the minds of the public
as to the value of drugs in the treatment of dis-
ease. This idea was supported for financial reasons
by the manufacturers of the various biological prod-
ucts, who were aided by their partners in official
positions. As a consequence the regular school of
medicine, which had relied on drugs from time im-
memorial, suddenly found itself confronted by a new
and virile cult, the school of drugless medicine.
How serious a menace this has become to the pres-
tige of the regular practitioner is shown by the fact

ORGANIZED MEDICINE 29

that these "physicians of health" — the osteopath,
the chiropractor, the dietician — are now able to
claim that their clients number twenty-eight millions.

It must not be supposed that the regular physi-
cians were satisfied to see their patients slip away
from them. There was much criticism, even ridi-
cule, of their leaders, and in some instances open
rebellion. But in the majority of cases the practi-
tioner decided that it was politic to retain his mem-
bership in the association. However, it began to
dawn upon him that some of the medical authorities
were lining their pockets at his expense.

In all this, serum therapy played an important
part.

CHAPTER V

THE SERUM CONTROVERSY

When we consider that for centuries man had
been groping in vain for the causes of disease, it is
easy to account for the strong appeal of the new
science. After it was discovered that a small amount
of serum derived from a horse which had been
inoculated with the diphtheria bacillus would pro-
tect a human being against the specific toxin of the
disease, it was thought that within a short time suc-
cessful preparations would be secured from the
germs of other diseases. We now know that there
is great variety in pathogenic organisms and that
many of them do not yield to serum therapy.
Nevertheless, certain definite results had been
achieved and our medical authorities were able to
obtain support for their work in government appro-
priations and large contributions from private in-
dividuals. In addition, valuable publicity was se-
cured from the press of the country. With this
support, it was a comparatively easy matter to per-
suade the practitioner to accept serum therapy.

But it soon became evident that the authorities had

30

THE SERUM CONTROVERSY 31

been over-sanguine and that serum therapy was far
from accomplishing all that had been hoped for.
The failure reacted against its advocates and opened
a point of attack for the osteopath and chiropractor,
which they were not slow to use to advantage. It
is quite possible that the newer medical schools
would have been content to "live and let live." They
had received some recognition from the regular prac-
titioners, who occasionally called in their assistance.
But Organized Medicine, jealous of its control, un-
dertook a campaign against them, hoping to limit
their practice by legislation. In some of the states
this was actually accomplished; and so the newer
schools felt compelled to retaliate. The following,
taken from Dr. Alma C. Arnold's "The Triangle
of Health," will serve as an example of their
methods :

"Infantile Paralysis and Vaccination: Do you
know that infantile paralysis often follows vac-
cination? (See report by James A. Loyster of
investigations of 54 cases of illness and death
from vaccination in New York State during 19 14,
and statistics.)

"Do you know that investigation of the epi-
demics of 1907 and 19 1 6 produced strong evi-
dence that they were started from vaccine virus?
(See New York Herald for September 28, 19 16.)

32 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

"Do you know that the United States Govern-
ment proved that the epidemics of foot and
mouth disease, which swept this country in 1902-3
and 1908-14, were started from vaccine virus?
(See Bureau of Animal Industry, Circular No.
147, and Farmers' Bulletin No. 666.)

"Do you know that hundreds of United States
soldiers on the Texas border have suffered from
paratyphoid fever caused by typhoid vaccination?
(See newspapers and Army Reports.)

"Do you know that the cases of typhoid fever
among the Spanish- American war soldiers in 1898
(before the discovery of typhoid vaccine)
amounted to 8.8 per cent.? (See U. S. Army Re-
ports.)

"Do you know that when the 14th Regiment
N. Y. N. G., U. S., arrived at Camp Whitman
from the Texas border, the cases of paratyphoid,
together with the healthy active carriers,
amounted to 17 per cent. — double that of 1898?
(See N. Y. Health Department Reports.)

"Do you know that paratyphoid fever is human
hog-cholera? (Appleton's Medical Dictionary,
January, 19 16, defines it: 'Paratyphoid — resem-
bling typhoid fever or the typhoid bacillus. Par-
atyphoid bacillus — an organism belonging to the
hog-cholera group, which causes paratyphoid
fever.')

THE SERUM CONTROVERSY 33

"Do you know that nearly 70,000 British sol-
diers (all vaccinated for typhoid immunity)
were sent home from the Gallipoli Peninsula
with tuberculosis, and as a result compulsory vac-
cination has been abolished in England? (See re-
port of speeches in the House of Commons.)

"Do you know that New York City statistics
show that cancer has increased there fully 225
per cent, since 1870? (See Board of Health Re-
port.)

"Do you know that cancer and tuberculosis
are traced by specialists to blood debasement from
vaccination? (See writings of Sir Robert Bell,
f°r 43 years cancer specialist in London; and
many others.)

"Do you know that, contrary to the general
belief, the wide use of diphtheria antitoxin has
neither lowered the number of cases, nor the
deaths? (See Report of special inquiry by the
New York City Health Department, published in
the New York World for June 12, 19 16.)

"Do you know that the Flexner serum for
cerebro-spinal meningitis was injected into 15
children in the City Hospital of Cincinnati, Ohio,
and that 14 died within five minutes? (See full
report in the Cincinnati Enquirer for March 18,
1914.)

"Do you know that the recurrence of the out-

34 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

break of foot and mouth disease in 191 6 was due
to anti-hog-cholera serum? (See Report of the
Bureau of Animal Industry for September 28,
1915.)

"Do you know that, following this discovery,
the Canadian Government passed a law prohibit-
ing the use of these serums?

"These are facts! Can you disprove them, or
do you know anyone who can?"

In thus striking at serum therapy, the newer
schools were aiming a blow at the very foundation
of the medical power. Mystery, like superstition,
has always been a golden key in the hands of those
whose superior knowledge enabled them to use it.
Anybody who has followed the medical items in the
public press will recall how consistently the mysteries
of serum therapy have been overworked to reassure
the public during the recent epidemics, and to allay
the general clamor at the failure of the measures
adopted by the medical authorities. These attacks
were continued in pamphlets and in paid advertise-
ments in the newspapers. That they were not with-
out effect is shown by the difficulty which the advo-
cates of serum therapy began to experience in ob-
taining government appropriations for their work.
Serious as this might appear to those who aimed at
the permanent control of medicine in the United
States, a still graver danger threatened.

CHAPTER VI

A NEW FACTOR

Among the many brilliant investigators whose
names are associated with the solution of the dis-
ease problem, probably no one accomplished more
than Paul Ehrlich. One of our greatest authori-
ties on infection and immunity calls him the "Grand-
master of experimental medicine." It was Ehrlich
who demonstrated how the body, when attacked by
pathogenic organisms, produced its antibodies, thus
elucidating one of the most important problems in
medicine, that of nature's second and final defence
against disease. His side-chain theory has now
passed many corroborative tests and is generally ac-
cepted by the medical profession.

This discovery was of the greatest importance,
because hitherto it had been supposed that once the
mechanism of the body was understood, the control
of disease would be assured. Ehrlich was able to
show that if the infection exceeded a certain degree
of virulence, it was too powerful for the curative
forces of the body. But in other sciences man has
improved on nature's methods, and Ehrlich turned

35

36 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

to the germicide to find a power greater than nature
herself was able to apply just where and when it
was needed. Antiseptics had come into very general
use for the treatment of all infections of the outer
parts of the body, and they were widely employed
in sanitation. Further, it had been shown that the
effectiveness of some of the drugs of the older phar-
macopoeia was partially due to germicidal proper-
ties. Ehrlich began a series of experiments with a
view to obtaining a germicide which could be used
effectively in the body. And thus a new theory in
medicine, chemotherapy, was born.

The ordinary germicide is so poisonous that any
attempt to employ it in the body for the destruction
of a parasite would also prove fatal to the host.
This was clearly the first difficulty to overcome.
There are many chemicals with germicidal proper-
ties whose toxicity can be partially or wholly neutral-
ized by combination with other chemicals. Ehrlich
conceived the idea of producing by chemical com-
bination a germicide which, though the toxicity had
been eliminated, would still retain sufficient germi-
cidal power to be effective in medication. A second
very serious difficulty was encountered. It soon de-
veloped that a germicide might prove effective in
the laboratory test tube but not when taken into
the system, where it entered into a chemical com-
bination with the albumins of the blood and so lost

A NEW FACTOR 37

its germicidal power. Ehrlich, however, was not to
be baffled. Chemical after chemical was combined,
and at last, in his six hundred and sixth attempt, he
produced his Salvarsan. While Salvarsan was not
entirely effective it served to demonstrate the correct-
ness of the theory; and it was followed by a later
combination on the same lines, Neo-salvarsan.

In 1909 and 19 10 Ehrlich published treatises on
his experiments in chemotherapy. These created a
profound impression on the leaders of Organized
Medicine. It was realized that if his theories were
sound, chemistry would play the chief part in medi-
cine in the future and the chemist who produced a
perfect germicide would be in a position to dictate
to the profession throughout the world. If chemo-
therapy should replace serum therapy, the vast sums
which the manufacturers and other advocates of
serum were receiving might be turned into another
channel. It was even within the bounds of possi-
bility that chemists might be able to establish their
right to places on the medical boards. Then, too,
chemotherapy might be adopted by the newer schools
of medicine and the union of these two interests
form a combination which it would be difficult for
the organization to withstand. There seemed but
one way out, the passage of such laws as would in-
sure complete control to the association.

During the legislative campaign against patent

38 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

medicines it had been demonstrated that restrictive
laws could not be passed without outside help. There
had been some successes, such as the passage of
the laws relating to habit-forming drugs. But the
legislatures were unwilling to restrict pharmaceu-
tical chemistry to the point desired by the medical
trust. The success of the drug law, however, sug-
gested a way out of the difficulty. If, through a
trade with the prohibitionists, the association should
be able to put whisky on the prescription shelf, it
would be but a short step further to extend the law
to proprietaries containing alcohol. And this might
be pushed further still to cover all pharmaceuticals,
including germicides, once the people had become
accustomed to government regulation in such
matters.

But time went by, Ehrlich died, and no chemist
had been able to produce an effective internal germi-
cide, although both European and American ex-
perts had made many attempts. The medical trust
began to breathe more easily. This, however, was
not to last. In 191 6 the American Medical Asso-
ciation was notified that a new germicide had been
produced and that its effectiveness had been sub-
stantiated by careful experiments. Some time was
spent by the organization in verifying these facts
and in negotiating for the control of formulas and
process. But it was evident that control could not

A NEW FACTOR 39

be established in this way and that legislation must
be resorted to. A time for action had come at last.
At a meeting of the association held on June 6,
19 1 7, Dr. Charles H. Mayo made a strong address
in favor of national prohibition, and at a later meet-
ing of the House of Delegates the following resolu-
tion was passed:

"Whereas, We believe that the use of alcohol
is detrimental to the human economy, and

Whereas, Its use in therapeutics as a tonic or
stimulant or for food has no scientific value;
therefore be it

Resolved, That the American Medical Asso-
ciation is opposed to the use of alcohol as a bev-
erage; and be it further

Resolved, That the use of alcohol as a thera-
peutic agent should be further discouraged."

The medical value of alcohol was known to the
Babylonians and Phoenicians, and probably in the
days before history was written. Yet in one sweep-
ing statement the accumulated experience of cen-
turies was thrown overboard. There is no more con-
servative element in society than the medical pro-
fession; its traditions and training all tend toward
conservatism. How was it, then, that it permitted
its leaders to put through anything so radical? In
the first place, the sentiment was not unanimous.

40 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

There was a strong minority feeling against the
resolution and, following its passage, the question
was agitated for months in the medical press. But
the theories of Ehrlich's followers were also revolu-
tionary. Medication by germicide was in some re-
spects a complete departure from established prac-
tice, and the very conservatism of the physician
favored the passage of the resolution as the choice,
if one must be made, between two evils.

The medical practitioner receives his compensa-
tion, in most instances, on the basis of the number of
visits made. Preventive medicine, in spite of its
boasted achievements, had not interfered with this
method of charging. But Ehrlich's followers had
demonstrated that the germicide would materially
shorten the period of illness. Its adoption there-
fore would reduce the physician's income until a new
system of arranging fees should be put in force.
This would not be difficult to devise, and common
sense clearly calls for it. But the inertia of the pro-
fession and the acquiescence of the public have so
far preserved the old way. That is natural enough,
no doubt; custom clings. But some clinging cloys.
However, the antiquated fee system played its part,
as has just been indicated, in the attitude assumed
by the profession toward the two questions of press-
ing importance brought before it — prohibition and
chemotherapy.

CHAPTER VII

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CHEMOTHERAPY

Society has long been looking for some method
of treatment that will shorten the period of disease.
Sanitation and preventive medicine have indeed done
much to reduce the toll which sickness exacts from
civilized communities. Nevertheless, there are still
many diseases which appear periodically and run
their course undeterred by scientific effort. There
could be no more important contribution to national
weal and wealth than cutting the waste caused by
disease. This is one of the arguments used most
frequently by the prohibitionists. We may there-
fore consider briefly the theories of the chemothera-
pists and see what, with the help of the prohibi-
tionists, Organized Medicine was attempting to sup-
press.

Since the earliest days of medical science the cure
of disease has been accomplished by the natural
powers of the body. In cases where nature's defence
and the attacking force of the infection approach
equality, the physician's influence may be the decisive
factor. By the use of drugs he may reduce fever,

41

42 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

relieve pain, correct intestinal disorders or stimulate
activity in some organ; or by means of serum he may
add to the protective forces which the body itself
produces. But, in a large measure, we have relied
on nature to accomplish the cure.

The defensive forces of the body may be divided
into two classes: those which are available at the
time the infection occurs, and those which develop
as the direct result of the infection. In the first
class are normal serum and the power of the white
blood corpuscles and other phagocytes to ingest dis-
ease germs. In the second class are the various
bacteriolytic and antitoxic antibodies which are lib-
erated by the cells after disease has found a footing
in the system.

Infectious disease is caused by minute organisms
which make their way through the outer coverings
of the body into the system proper. This is termed
infection. When it occurs the organisms or germs
are met by the first defence of the body, the white
blood corpuscles gathering at the point of invasion
and taking up and destroying the invaders. If the
germs are able to overcome this first line of defence,
they multiply and infection develops into infectious
disease. The system then calls upon its second de-
fence, the antibodies. From this stage onward the
conditions are those of a great battle (in its own
sphere), each side bringing up its reserves in large

SIGNIFICANCE OF CHEMOTHERAPY 43

numbers; the germs, it may be, attempting to pre-
vent antibody formation either directly, by the ac-
tion of their toxins on the cells, or indirectly by
their effect on the organs. Thus the disease advances
to a crisis, the outcome depending upon the relative
strength of the contending forces. All this involves
of course a great strain on the body, and when the
conflict is over and victory won, nature requires a
period of convalescence to repair the incidental
damage.

In putting forward its secondary defence the body
is responding to a stimulus, the presence of the germs
in the system. In other words, it reacts to the in-
fection. Antibody formation, or the manufacture
of the body's own germicides and antitoxins, is not
carried on actively until the infection has become
established. Valuable time is thus lost while the
system is adjusting itself to meet the invasion: un-
preparedness, here at least, has its manifest dangers.
Ehrlich's followers were able to demonstrate that
a greater germicidal power than that of the body it-
self could be applied as soon as the first symptoms
gave warning of the infection, and that the germs
could be destroyed in the body by means of a chemi-
cal germicide long before nature could produce anti-
bodies in sufficient number to affect the situation.
Thus the progress of the disease could be appreciably
shortened, and in consequence a long period of con-

44 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

valescence avoided. But the chemotherapists went
even a step further. They advanced the theory that
the poison of disease in virulent form is almost as
rapidly destructive as some of the mineral poisons
and that often the time is limited in which success-
ful treatment can be undertaken. Not only, then,
did they advocate a treatment which would mate-
rially shorten the period of illness, but they went so
far as to say that disease must be cured at once
unless the physician would risk the loss of his patient.
There is nothing extraordinary in the opposition
of the medical association to the germicide. It is not
unprecedented for established interests to oppose the
innovations which mark the advance of civilization,
though they have always been forced to admit their
error later and acknowledge the benefits which have
come to them as to the rest of mankind. When
textile machinery was introduced into England, it
was met with riots and arson. At that time the
Manchester weavers numbered five thousand. Just
prior to the Great War this number had risen to
nearly thirty thousand, while individual yardage had
increased eight or ten times, though the population
had not more than doubled. Comparatively re-
cently, the introduction of the automobile was looked
on with disfavor by the horse and carriage trade,
from the manufacturer down to the lowest groom.
Yet the prosperity enjoyed by the manufacturer who

SIGNIFICANCE OF CHEMOTHERAPY 45

has adopted the new vehicle has never been equalled
in industrial history, while the coachman or groom
has materially bettered himself by accepting the
chauffeur's position.

It is to be hoped that Organized Medicine, duly
concerned with its own material interests, will re-
alize that a living patient is more profitable than a
dead one, and that it will be better for the physician
to keep his patients alive even though a cure is ef-
fected in a fewer number of chargeable visits.

CHAPTER VIII

A PROFITABLE PARTNERSHIP

The resolution of the American Medical Asso-
ciation condemning alcohol was of the utmost impor-
tance to the advocates of prohibition. They realized
fully that without this support it would be difficult to
maintain the constitutionality of the Eighteenth
Amendment. American institutions, including the
Supreme Court, were created to carry out certain
principles laid down in the Declaration of Independ-
ence. Among these was the right of every man to
live — apparently not an unreasonable proposition.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal; that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable rights;
that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness. That, to secure these rights, gov-
ernments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed."

If alcohol were necessary either as a food or a

medicine to maintain life, then prohibition and the

46

A PROFITABLE PARTNERSHIP 47

law for its enforcement would be clearly contrary
to the spirit of the Constitution. There was a de-
cision of the British courts declaring alcohol to be
a food. That was not a legal precedent for Amer-
ica, but it showed that an American precedent might
easily be established. By some, alcohol was con-
sidered almost fundamental in the treatment of dis-
ease. If this could be maintained, no law could
stand that would make it necessary to pay toll to a
small privileged class to obtain a commodity, simple
but indispensable, which can be manufactured in the
home far more easily than most foods can be pre-
pared. The resolution got around these difficulties
by the statement that "alcohol is detrimental to the
human economy." Thus the anomalous situation
was created that the legality of an amendment to the
Constitution of the United States might become de-
pendent not upon the decision of the Supreme Court,
but upon the fiat of a medical junto whose avowed
purpose was to safeguard "the material interests of
the medical profession.'*

A programme had already been adopted by the
association's Committee on Legislation. An exam-
ination of the various bills that have been introduced
from time to time will give some idea of the scope
of this programme. They provide for the follow-
ing:

48 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

Control of medical education and license to
practise, including suppression of independent
opinion and conduct.

Compulsory publication of proprietary formulas
and control of the sales through physicians' pre-
scriptions.

Compulsory health insurance, or, in other
words, a state subsidy for the organized profes-
sion.

To these was now added the sole privilege of dis-
pensing alcohol. The monopoly would serve two
purposes. It would help to accustom the public to
medical control of foods and drugs. It would prove
remunerative, and thus restore some .of the income
which had been lost to the profession through the
active competition of the osteopaths and other health
schools. How lucrative prohibition has actually
proved to the medical profession is shown by a re-
cent statement of the federal prohibition director
of the State of Illinois. In the City of Chicago,
where the headquarters of the American Medical
Association are located, during the first four and
one-half months of national prohibition five hundred
thousand physicians' prescriptions for whisky were
issued, and the federal department estimates that
of these, three hundred thousand evaded the spirit
or letter of the enforcement law.

A PROFITABLE PARTNERSHIP 49

To put the association's programme into effect,
control of the legislatures would be necessary. It was
also deemed advisable, if possible, to place a physi-
cian in the White House. This could only be ac-
complished with strong financial backing, but the
support given to the prohibitionists by the associa-
tion was worth any price which might be demanded.
The necessary supplies could be obtained from the
life insurance companies, whose medical departments
may be classed as a branch of Organized Medicine,
and through them from other great corporations,
many of which are partly controlled by the insur-
ance companies through their investments.

CHAPTER IX

THE OTHER PARTNERS

In 1908 the life insurance companies undertook
an investigation of the mortality among their policy
holders. A committee of actuaries and medical di-
rectors was appointed, of which Mr. Arthur Hunter,
the Actuary of the New York Life Insurance Com-
pany, was chairman. The material was taken from
the records of two million policy holders and the
inquiry covered the period from 1885 to 1908-
Careful attention was directed to the mortality
among those policy holders using alcohol and the
results were classified according to the degree of
their indulgence. The mortality among those en-
gaged in the various branches of the liquor trade was
ascertained separately, and the figures compared with
the general average of insured individuals. From
these statistics it was apparent that alcohol (or its
environment) was distinctly unfavorable to longev-
ity. Still, no attempt was made to analyze the dif-
ferent conditions prevailing among total abstainers,
so that no comparisons could be carried out to de-
termine how much of the increased mortality was

so

THE OTHER PARTNERS 51

actually due to alcohol, and how much could be at-
tributed to unhealthy surroundings and other factors.
Life insurance is run on a strictly business basis.
The lower the annual premium, the better showing
life insurance will make when compared with other
forms of investment. If prohibition would improve
the mortality table by increasing the general expect-
ancy, the insurance companies could well afford to
devote a few years' savings towards the cause, and
this in itself would amount to an enormous sum.
But aside from financial support, the cooperation of
the life insurance companies was of special value
because their statistics could be used to place pro-
hibition in an attractive light before the corporations
of the country. In recent years a great deal of time
and thought has been given to increasing the effi-
ciency of our industrial life. It is not surprising that
alcohol should come under the unfavorable notice
of the experts. In some instances it was unques-
tionably increasing the cost of labor by depriving
the employer of services for which he had paid
and to which he was justly entitled. In addi-
tion, there was some waste of raw material through
bad workmanship. All this could be traced directly
to alcohol, but on the other hand there were no
means of computing its benefits, as the increased effi-
ciency due to a higher standard of health or morals
was problematical. The efficiency expert is seldom

52 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

an economist, and further, he has to depend on
others for technical information. It is not surpris-
ing, therefore, that he was able to see only one side
of the prohibition question.

On account of our great natural wealth, American
industries are growing at a rate which exceeds the
natural increase of our population. This country
is consequently dependent upon immigration for a
considerable part of its labor requirements. Dur-
ing the past 145 years thirty-three million immi-
grants have entered the country. In 19 13, the last
year before the tide of immigration was interrupted
by the Great War, the net increase of population
from foreign sources was 891,276. In 19 19, the
year after the signing of the armistice, with national
prohibition an assured fact, this increase amounted
to only 20,790, and this, too, in spite of the unprece-
dented rise in wages and the fact that American
taxes are largely borne by the capitalistic class. It
was not until it became apparent that national pro-
hibition could not possibly be enforced that immigra-
tion began to resume its normal flow.

But there is still another side to the effect of
prohibition on the labor situation. The further we
descend in the social scale, the less man depends for
guidance upon reason and the more he has to rely
upon his instinct. The lower animals, if left to
themselves, can trust their instinct to select the food

THE OTHER PARTNERS 53

which their bodies require. It is only when man or
famine interferes that we find malnutrition in our
wild or domestic animals. Similarly, the laboring
classes under normal conditions eat and drink to
restore the tissue which has been burned up in bodily
exercise. Prohibition deprived them of a nourish-
ment to which they had become accustomed, and no
amount of reasoning on the part of those who did
not share their conditions could convince them that
this was right. Nor were all affected in the same
way. It is an instructive commentary on the blun-
dering fashion in which the matter was approached,
that the efficiency experts apparently did not know
that many of our foreign laborers were obtaining
their alcohol in wines and other beverages made in
their own homes. This was especially true of the
Italians. There was hardly an Italian home with
any ground around it which did not contain its little
vineyard; and those less fortunate were often sup-
plied by their neighbors. Interference with such a
system, both primitive and picturesque, was bound
to add to the general discontent; and even a small
dissatisfied element is a dangerous thing in these
days of labor unionism, since it often becomes an
effective club in the hands of a radical leader. All
this was pointed out to the prohibitionists by the
officers of the American Federation of Labor, and
subsequent events have justified their warning.

54 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

But in the case of the Standard Oil Company-
there were stronger reasons than the mere increased
cost of labor for joining in any movement which had
the approval of the American Medical Association.

In 1 90 1 the Rockefellers entered the medical field-
There could be no more important public service
than that for which the Rockefeller Institute for
Medical Research was established. It was with a
feeling of general satisfaction that the public viewed
this enterprise of our richest citizen, and it was not
through any fault of the founder that the under-
taking failed to fulfil its object. The institute was
handicapped from the beginning by the fact that it
had to look for its workers amongst establishments
already controlled by the association or in sympathy
with its aims and methods, and thus the blight which
has hung over medicine throughout the country was
inevitably introduced into the new foundation.

While little has been accomplished from the sci-
entific standpoint, the union of these two interests
has been a great success commercially. The Rocke-
feller support of the tenets of the association has
aided the latter materially in its conflict with the
newer schools. The reports of the institute have
been valuable propaganda for the medical organiza-
tion. No one could well question the disinterested-
ness of these reports, and yet there were influential
men within the institution who were able to guide its

THE OTHER PARTNERS 55

activities along the lines best suited to the interests
of the association.

In return, the association has put the stamp of its
approval on the petroleum laxatives manufactured
by the Standard Oil Company. These products sell
for four times the price petroleum brings for illumi-
nating purposes. But the use of mineral oil and
other laxatives has been condemned both by the
physicians of health and the chemotherapists as a
worthless and dangerous practice. If Mr. Rocke-
feller's scientists had by any chance communicated
to the officers of his company the plans to discredit
the newer schools, they could scarcely have proved
objectionable to the sales management of the Stand-
ard Oil Company. Nor could any individual — cer-
tainly not Mr. Rockefeller himself — be blamed for
this condition of affairs. It is the system which is at
fault. To-day the science of medicine is an open
book to the initiated, but through a com-
plicated system of technical terms and hiero-
glyphics it has been made a mystery to the lay-
man, a mystery as fascinating and sometimes as
misleading as the fairy tales of our childhood.
The management of a great corporation is
carried on through a series of departments and the
responsibility is divided, from the president or chair-
man of the board down to the lowest clerk. It was
sufficient for the officials that Mr. Rockefeller was

56 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

willing to back this charitable enterprise. They
trusted to a business acumen which until then had
never been at fault. Nor are his scientists to blarne.
The system of medical education in the United States
reaches down to the primary schools. If a man is
forced to wear red or blue glasses from boyhood, he
is apt to become color blind.

And so we find a collection of associations and
corporations whose interests were all closely allied.
Yet it were foolish to assert that prohibition was the
result of an arch conspiracy, although there was
much plotting and planning within the organizations
themselves. Each of these interests was probably
going quietly along, minding its own business, like
cattle grazing contentedly on a wide plain. Then
somebody started something, and the stampede came
off.

And what about the Anti-Saloon League? A
very interesting sidelight on the part played by this
organization has recently been disclosed. It seems
that when certain prominent citizens of Georgia
decided that for political reasons the state must
become dry, they encountered the opposition of the
league's representatives. For years these men had
been living on prohibition. Time after tima the
law had been brought to the point of passing, only
to be held over for a future legislature because they
feared that with prohibition the services of the

THE OTHER PARTNERS 57

league would no longer be needed. When the new
interests took charge of the national movement, the
Anti-Saloon League was assigned to a place which
it could fill to the advantage of the cause, but in
which the Georgia fiasco would not be repeated.
The last days of Demon Rum resembled a tiger
hunt in the jungles of India ; the Anti-Saloon League
were the beaters. The organization was well
equipped to play the role. Men of the stamp of
William H. Anderson, Pussyfoot Johnson, William
Jennings Bryan, R. P. Hobson of Merrimac fame,
and Wayne B. Wheeler, the cock-horse of the Vol-
stead Committee, could be depended on to supply
the noise. But the men with the guns loaded with
silver bullets represented those interests which had
something more at stake than simply removing the
curse of alcoholism from the weakling.

If there is still any doubt in the mind of the reader
as to the real power behind the prohibition move-
ment, let him examine the foreword written by
Professor Irving Fisher for Dr. Fisk's book
"Alcohol — Its Relation to Human Efficiency and
Longevity." The following is a brief extract :

"Many things are now known concerning the
effects — physiological, psychological and social —
of alcohol, which were not known a few years
ago ; and there is, consequently, a growing desire

58 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

on the part of men of affairs to learn the exact
facts and to make use of this knowledge in their
business. Indeed, it may be said that the chief
driving force to-day toward temperance and total
abstinence, whether voluntary or enforced, is an
economic force — the constant urge toward indus-
trial efficiency. It is this new force which, added
to forces previously at work, has in recent years
caused the tidal wave of prohibition to sweep over
this country."

CHAPTER X

SOME PROHIBITION PROPAGANDA

It may be only a coincidence, but the fact is never-
theless worth recording, that Dr. Fisk's book on
alcohol, the resolution of the American Medical
Association denouncing alcohol, and the association's
condemnation of the chemotherapists, appeared
within a few days of one another in the summer of
19 17. Dr. Fisk's book presents the life insurance
companies' case against alcohol. It is possibly the
most ambitious presentation of the prohibition ques-
tion from this standpoint. It has the endorsement
of many prominent members of the American Med-
ical Association sitting on the Hygiene Reference
Board of the Life Extension Institute.

Dr. Fisk's writings did much to further the cause
of prohibition. They acquired a wide circulation —
many of his chapters having previously appeared in
the form of magazine articles. They may therefore
be considered as typical examples of prohibition prop-
aganda. The book itself is more of a compilation
than an individual effort. The author seems to have
taken the prohibition arguments — many of them

59

60 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

manufactured in the laboratory, away from actual
living conditions — at their face value, and to have
passed them on to his readers without any attempt
to analyze them. It is not so much what Dr. Fisk
has said as what he has left unsaid that brands many
of these representations as the rankest sophistry.
For example, under the heading of "Alcohol and
Resistance" we find:

uFillinger found the resistance of the red blood-
cells much reduced after administration of cham-
pagne to healthy human subjects, and similar re-
sults were found in dogs and rabbits. Weinberg
confirmed these results by similar methods, show-
ing that 20 per cent, of the red cells lose their re-
sistance after the administration of 450 cubic cen-
timetres of champagne."

Here is a direct accusation against alcohol and
a very serious one, for antibody formation, the
body's natural defence against disease, is dependent
on the health of the cells.

Champagne contains about 13 percent, of alcohol.
If it were the alcohol in this beverage which caused
the injury to the red blood-cells, we might reasonably
expect a similar result from other wines or malt
liquors in proportion to their alcoholic content. As
this is not the case, we must look further for the
harmful effect of champagne. Now champagne

SOME PROHIBITION PROPAGANDA 61

contains a deadly poison, carbon dioxide (C02) or
carbonic acid gas. There is probably more of this
gas in champagne than in any other beverage. Any
little chorus girl along Broadway will tell you that
the popular name for the popular wine is "bubbles."
If we turn to our chemistry we find:

A rose placed in a glass bulb from which the air
is removed while C02 is introduced will lose its
color at once.

An animal introduced into an atmosphere of
pure C02 dies almost instantly and without en-
trance of the gas into the lungs, death resulting
from spasm of the glottis (ventricle of the larynx)
and consequent apnoea (absence of respiration).

An animal will die rapidly in an atmosphere
composed of 21 per cent. O (oxygen), 59 per cent.
N (nitrogen), and 20 per cent. C02 by volume;
but it will live for several hours in an atmosphere
whose composition is 40 per cent. O, 37 per cent.
N and 23 per cent. C02. When present in large
proportion, C02 produces immediate loss of mus-
cular power, and death without a struggle; when
more dilute, a sense of irritation of the larynx,
drowsiness, pain in the head, giddiness, gradual
loss of muscular power, and death in coma.*

* "The Medical Student's Manual of Chemistry"; Witt-
haus, pp. 355-6.

62 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

This is the reason for the seriousness of the
"champagne jag." If Dr. Fisk has forgotten his
chemistry, was there no one on the Hygiene Refer-
ence Board who could have brought these elementary
facts to his attention? The doctor tells us in his
preface that "The Board was practically unanimous
in endorsing the author's presentation of the evi-
dence, only a few members dissenting."

Here is another example.

The prohibitionists have endeavored to create the
impression that alcohol is one of the chief causes of
insanity. Dr. Fisk says, "Psychopathic conditions
(i.e. those relating to mental disease), including
excessive or palpably injurious indulgence in alcohol,
developing after the 'risks' had been on the books
(of the life insurance companies) must be accepted
in the main as a charge against so-called moderate
drinking. They are quite as much a possible effect
of moderate drinking as any of the many other path-
ological conditions that are known to result from
steady drinking, such as cirrhosis of the liver, fatty
liver, or kidney affections, or the various forms of
nervous disease or life-failure that may result from
the psychic disturbances due to alcohol."* This is
all in a piece with the statement of the prohibition-
ists which was circulated in the public press, that

* "Alcohol — Its Relation to Human Efficiency and Lon-
gevity" ; Fisk, pp. 49, 50.

-SOME PROHIBITION PROPAGANDA 63

"the intemperate use of alcohol is filling our insane
asylums, jails, poorhouses and cemeteries." Let us
see how near the truth these assertions are.

The total number of insane patients admitted to
our hospitals in the year 19 10, according to the
figures of the Census Bureau,* was 60,700. Of
these, 6,122, or 10.7 per cent., were suffering from
alcoholic psychosis. Careful investigations showed
that out of a total of 25,000,000 males who used
alcoholic beverages, about 5000, or one-fiftieth of
one per cent., developed alcoholic insanity annually.
This is the basis for the statement that "alcohol is
filling our insane asylums." A further examination
of these statistics showed that in a great many in-
stances alcoholism was not the cause but merely a
symptom of some inherent mental defect, either
congenital or acquired. Dr. William A. White,
superintendent of the government hospital for the
insane (St. Elizabeth's Hospital) at Washington,
D. C, says in his paper on the subject, presented at a
meeting of the Society for the Study of Inebriety :

"Is alcohol in these cases only a symptom of
some underlying fundamental condition which has
escaped our notice, simply because it is too subtle
to be seen by casual observation or found by ordi-
nary methods of inquiry? I think it is, and my

*The figures for the 1920 census are not yet available.

64 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

attention was first attracted to this possibility
many years ago. Some of you at least will re-
member the work of the English hereditarian, G.
Archdall Reid, 'Darwinism and Race Progress/
in which the author, who, I may remind you, has
since written many able and learned works, under-
took a statistical study of the effects produced by
prohibition in several of our prohibition states,
where prohibition statutes had been in operation
for a considerable number of years. His con-
clusions were no less striking than unexpected at
that time. They were to the effect that the sta-
tistics clearly indicated that in these states, as the
consumption of alcohol had been diminished and
as drunkenness had been lessened, the admission
to the insane asylums and poorhouses had pro-
gressively and correspondingly increased. If we
do not instantly discard such a conclusion as this,
and will stop for a moment and give it careful
consideration, we must be struck by the probability
of its truth and by its important social significance.
Such a conclusion can only mean that the alcoholic
as such is a mental defective in some way, and that
if his mental deficiency does not show as indul-
gence in alcohol, it will later show as a frank
mental disease, or as that type of deficiency which
leads to pauperism.

"This conclusion, I am convinced, is a correct

SOME PROHIBITION PROPAGANDA 6s

one, and I am reminded as I dictate these words
of the occasion of a meeting of your society here
at Washington some two or three years ago in
which I heard your president, a man grown old
in this particular work, say in discussion that he
had never seen an inebriate who aside from his
inebriety was a normal man."

But the most convincing evidence of the fallacy of
Dr. Fisk's statement is furnished by the figures of
the Census Bureau. These statistics show that in
19 10 wet Nebraska had the lowest insanity rate of
any state in the Union, while dry Oklahoma had,
with the exception of Colorado and Nevada, the
highest rate. In Maine, the banner prohibition state,
the number of insane persons increased from 92.6
per 100,000 in 1890 to 169.5 per 100,000 in 1910,
a gain in the wrong direction of 83 per cent, for the
twenty year period. In Kansas, another prohibition
state, the insanity rate increased 94 per cent. Wet
Rhode Island, on the other hand, showed a gain of
only 16 per cent, during the same period.

So far as suicidal insanity is concerned, Dr. John
P. Davin, of New York, summed up unfettered med-
ical opinion on the figures since prohibition went
into effect, and placed the responsibility in the right
place. Here is his letter to the press :*

* See the New York World for August 15, 192.1.

66 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

"That suicides have more than doubled, not in
a year, as you state, but in half a year, according
to the figures of the Save-a-Life League, is not to
be attributed to a suicide wave. Neither is it to
be attributed to a reaction of the war, to business
depression or to loss of work.

"In a previous report of the Save-a-Life League
the effects of prohibition and drug laws were em-
phasized as a factor in the increase which was
notecl by the society at that time also.

"Anyone at all familiar with the physical con-
ditions associated with the use of alcohol or nar-
cotic drugs knows that the deprivation of either is
followed by a depression that speedily deepens into
a contempt for life. This does not necessarily
mean the abuse of these agents by those addicted
to their use. . . . Crusades have been entered
upon by the government, urged on by lay agents
having no realization of the physical effects of
their actions, but who are carried away solely by
an enthusiasm for the moral regeneration which is
to follow their reforms. To what an extent this
has been carried on in this country is shown by
the legislative struggle now going on in Congress
to prohibit a physician from prescribing a bottle
of ale or beer for the sick or aged. No wonder
suicides are increasing here as they are nowhere
else unafflicted with this form of legislation."

SOME PROHIBITION PROPAGANDA 67

Probably the most one-sided of all Dr. Fisk's
prohibition "arguments" is his distortion of the re-
ports of investigators as to the effect of alcohol on
human efficiency. He has devoted considerable space
to tests made in the Nutrition Laboratory at Boston
and to the experiments of German scientists, all of
which tend to show a lowered efficiency in the worker
when alcohol is taken even in small doses. The fol-
lowing is a typical quotation :

"Aschaffenberg found that moderate doses of
alcohol lowered the amount of work done by print-
ing compositors and increased the liability to
error."

Now let us look at the other side of the story. A
piece of machinery can be kept in operation for a
long time without rest or repair, but eventually it
must be stopped and overhauled or it will go to
pieces. The human machine can operate for a short
time only without rest or relaxation. But when the
body has become relaxed, from whatever cause, its
productive efficiency is temporarily impaired, of
course. Yet such relaxation, whether it begins with
the nervous system under the influence of alcohol,
or in some other way, is a necessary preliminary to
renewed efficiency. When the system is strained by
too great effort, alcohol helps materially to induce
relaxation. The highest form of relaxation is sleep.

68 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

If these laboratory tests had been made while the
subject was under the influence of sleep they would
have been considered a joke. They are no less a
joke from the scientific standpoint because they have
been made to seem specious to those unfamiliar with
simple logical principles.

The impression we get from all this is that the
author depended for the success of his "arguments"
on the ignorance of his readers. It is by arguments
such as these that the dry party has attempted to
make prohibition appear attractive or at least rea-
sonable to the public. The other side of the
question has never been presented. Let us therefore
review the life insurance companies' case against
alcohol and see what they have found it expedient
to leave unsaid.

CHAPTER XI

ALCOHOL AND LONGEVITY

The interests of a nation and an individual citizen,
or group of citizens, are not always identical. Lon-
gevity is distinctly a case in point. It may be expe-
dient for the welfare of a nation, or even absolutely
necessary for its continued existence, that the lives of
some of its citizens be sacrificed. Many of our
countrymen voluntarily offered their lives for the
national cause in the Great War. If they carried a
life insurance company's policy, they had to pay an
extra premium for the privilege of being patriotic.
This may have been merely fair to the other policy
holders, but it was not in accordance with the wel-
fare of the nation as a whole. Such conflicts of
interests will be found in the pursuits of peace as
well as in the exigencies of war.

We have only to study the personal history of
some of our industrial leaders to see the fallacy of
applying the insurance companies' theories on lon-
gevity to our national life. There are many men,
well known in our banking and commercial circles,
who can still look back and recall with affection one

69

70 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

of the principal figures of their early business expe-
rience. They see a little man seated at a table
before a soft coal fire in a sunny room in the financial
district, a sandwich in one hand, a pencil in the other,
working out some problem which could not be de-
layed for culinary comforts. Trained from boyhood
in the school of our great merchants in the days
when the clipper ships still thrust their bowsprits
across the streets on the river front, before the
telephone and the typewriter had simplified business
correspondence, when night work was often the rule
rather than the exception, he had acquired habits of
industry which he was never willing to forsake, even
under the pressure of failing health. If work was
to be done, it mattered little when it was completed,
and he often worked until midnight. It is industry
such as this that wins success. He was one of our
/dominant constructive men.

He built up America's leading company in a basic
industry. He endowed colleges, founded churches
and educational institutions. If a friend needed
assistance, he was always ready to leave his own
multitudinous affairs and give sage counsel or
material help. Yet, from the insurance companies1
standpoint, his life was a failure because he literally
wore out his body before its allotted time. Which,
think you, is the better citizen or of more value to
the nation, a man such as this, or the man who lives

ALCOHOL AND LONGEVITY 71

his eighty or ninety years in comparative idleness
and dies in the poorhouse?

There are occasions, after great physical or mental
effort, when the body calls for alcohol. Perhaps if
we could rest, "lay 06°' for a day or two as advised
by the physicians of health, spend the time in bed if
need be, the body would make its own repairs and
we should be the better for it. But this is not
always possible in our business life. A man may not
be able to leave his affairs in charge of his clerks.
A banker or a broker on the floor of the Exchange
would laugh at the idea of deserting his partners in
time of emergency because his nervous system was
overstrained. Instead, he was accustomed to steady
his nerves with a cocktail, "take a bracer" as he
called it, and thus stimulate digestion for his evening
meal, so that he would be able to sleep at night and
"go at it again" the next day. Alcohol has been
likened in such cases to the whip which kills a tired
horse. It is not the whip that kills, but the pace. And
so, if we could analyze the life insurance statistics, we
should find in many instances that it was not the
alcohol which shortened life, but the over-exertion
which it makes possible. This may be an abuse of
alcohol, but it is not the abuse of the temperance
lecturer. The question arises, Has the individual a
right to use his own judgment in these matters ? He

72 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

may make mistakes, of course. On the other hand,
he may not.

Nature's ways are not the ways of civilization.
When she made alcohol it was perhaps without pre-
vision of the manifold changes which civilization
would effect in our mode of life. Alcohol may not
invariably fit these changes, but that is surely no
reason for depriving mankind of a vital gift.

We can sometimes get a clearer view of a subject
if we look at it from a new angle. I have spent
many a pleasant hour wandering over the hills of
New England. Recently, on the crest of a heavily
wooded hillside, I found the mark of the last furrow
turned by a plow on what had once been cultivated
land, in the days before the youth of New England
set out to find their fortunes in the prairie states of
the Middle West. New England is full of aban-
doned farms. It is an interesting study to see how
nature reclaims the worn-out pastures and restores
to its virgin fertility the soil which man has robbed
of its plant food until it will no longer bear a profit-
able crop. First, a carpet of weeds and rough
grasses is spread upon the land, then come the briars
and bushes, the sumacs, and the weeds of the forest,
the white birch. Every leaf that falls, every root
that dies, is adding its mite of plant food to the
renewed fertility of the mold. And now the young
forest trees spring up where the soil is strong enough

ALCOHOL AND LONGEVITY 73

to bear them, growing with ever increasing vigor
and crowding off their weaker neighbors until a
forest again covers the hillside. Autumn after
autumn they cast their leaves upon the ground, to
be packed down by the snows of winter and rot when
summer returns. Nature's process is perfect, but
it may take a hundred years. It is too slow for the
husbandman. He employs the methods of civiliza-
tion. He stimulates the soil's flagging powers with
a fertilizer and, if his crops take more out of the
soil than he is able to return, he will tell you that it
is his land and he has the right to do with it as he
pleases. No one would think of blaming him for
overworking his land to prevent the foreclosure of a
mortgage and thus save the roof over his family's
head. Yet Dr. Fisk's theories condemn the business
man who overworks his body for the sake of his
pressing interests. Shall we hold up to scorn such
a man, who chooses to crowd the work of two life-
times into the productive years of his prime ? The
question is as old as Cicero's "De Senectute" : shall
we measure life by the calendar or by its accom-
plishments ?

After all, the body is but a human machine which
will wear out from too much service, like those made
of steel and brass, or which will rust and deteriorate
from neglect and imperfect use. No doubt it might
be better for the average citizen to seek a happy

74 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

mean of safe and not exhausting effort. But man
cannot always find the good that he desires, or desire
the good that he may find. It is often necessary for
him to effect a compromise between his own ten-
dencies and the complex requirements of civilization.
If alcohol helps him to do this, should he be deprived
of a boon which nature herself has furnished ?

CHAPTER XII

MORE FALLACIOUS PROPAGANDA

The life insurance companies' statistics feature the
"Occupational Hazards from Alcohol." "Not the
least important feature," says Dr. Fisk,* "of the
investigation conducted by the forty-two companies
was the mortality figures in occupations where
alcohol figured as a hazard."

These figures were as follows :

Hotels

Death-rate above
the normal.
Proprietors, superintendents and man-
agers not tending bar 35 per cent.
Proprietors, superintendents and man-
agers tending bar 78 per cent.

Saloons and Billiard-Rooms,
Pool-Rooms and Bowling-Alleys
with Bar

Proprietors and managers not tending

bar 82 per cent.

Proprietors and managers tending bar 73 per cent.

* "Alcohol — Its Relation to Human Efficiency and Lon-
gevity"; pp. 31-34.

75

76 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

Breweries

Proprietors, managers and superinten-
^ dents 35 per cent.

Clerks 30 per cent.

Foremen, maltsters, beer-pump repair-
men and journeymen 52 per cent.

Distilleries

Proprietors, managers and superinten-
dents below normal 1 5 per cent.

Travelling salesmen and collectors for
distilleries, breweries and wholesale
liquor houses (excluding lifelong total
abstainers) above normal 28 per cent.

Wholesale Liquor Houses

Proprietors and managers 22 per cent.

Clerks 12 per cent.

Restaurants with Bar

Proprietors, superintendents and man-
agers not tending bar 52 per cent.

Waiters in hotels, restaurants and clubs

where liquor is served 77 per cent.

"These figures indicate," Dr. Fisk says, "that
saloon-keepers have a death-rate higher than that
of underground mine foremen; that brewery fore-
men, maltsters, and the like, have a death-rate higher
than electric linemen, glass- workers, city firemen
(laddermen, pipemen, hosemen), metal grinders or
hot-iron workers, although there is nothing in the

MORE FALLACIOUS PROPAGANDA 77

brewery or saloon business per se that is at all haz-
ardous or unhealthful, aside from the possible temp-
tation to drink and its collateral hazards. Proprie-
tors of distilleries are obviously not so directly ex-
posed to temptation or to other adverse influences
that obtain in the retail liquor trade; this accounts
for the favorable mortality."

The further we follow these life insurance statis-
tics, the more we are apt to wonder whether any
real attempt has been made to analyze them. Cer-
tainly the interpretation which is here given to them
is not in accordance with scientific facts. There is
no mystery about the cause of premature old age,
with all its infirmities and early death. Metchni-
koff's work in this particular field of research is
well known. Unquestionably his greatest contribu-
tion to medical science was his discovery of the
function of the white corpuscles of the blood. But
his popular fame will always rest upon his theories
for the prolongation of human life.

It is nature's familiar law that all flesh returns to
the soil from which it came. Nature's agents of
disintegration are the putrefying bacteria which
cause flesh to decay. The activities of these bacteria
are not confined to the dead animal body. The mi-
nute organisms are in the air and are taken into the
system with our food. Under favorable conditions
(for the bacteria) the intestines become infested,

78 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

with the result that there is putrefactive fermenta-
tion of the animal and vegetable substances in proc-
ess of digestion. Thus toxins are formed which are
absorbed by the blood, causing a slow, insidious
poisoning of the vital organs and the entire system,
until finally the body is forced to give up the struggle
long before its allotted time. Metchnikoff proved
that the presence or absence of putrefaction in the
large intestine is the chief factor that affects the
duration of life. Over ninety per cent, of all human
ailments are directly or indirectly traceable to these
intestinal poisons, or, as the condition is commonly
called, auto-intoxication.

Alcohol is contra-fermentative. Vegetable and
animal products are often preserved in alcoholic
liquors. Therefore, even if it does not actually
correct the fermentation, it could in no way add to
the putrefaction in the digestive tract. It is quite
evident that if we have an increased death-rate
among the proprietors of saloons of 82 per cent.,
due to alcohol, we cannot in addition attribute 90 per
cent. — :the established quota — to auto-intoxication.
A very simple arithmetical calculation will demon-
strate that the death-rate would be 72 per cent,
above the possible. The reader must, therefore,
choose between the theories of Dr. Fisk and those of
Professor Metchnikoff.

A closer inspection of the figures will throw fur-

MORE FALLACIOUS PROPAGANDA 79

ther light on the subject. In nearly all the situations
in which the highest death-rate occurs, we find that
the occupant is deprived of proper exercise. While
everybody is subject to auto-intoxication, it is far
more prevalent amongst those who lead a sedentary
life. Nature's corrective for this condition is exer-
cise. By invigorating the intestinal tract, this in-
duces a more perfect evacuation of the waste matter,
and the toxemia is carried off through the pores of
the skin in perspiration. Exercise in which the
abdominal muscles are brought into play is the most
effective.

In the saloon or hotel barroom the hours were
long. In many of our cities it was found expedient to
regulate the hours for closing. The larger barrooms
employed two staffs to handle the night and day
business. But in a large number of the smaller
places this could not be afforded; consequently the
proprietors, managers and bartenders remained at
their desks or behind the bar for long hours at a
time. I venture to believe that, if the truth were
known, the death-rate among bartenders was no
higher than among shop-girls spending the same
amount of time day in and day out, year in and year
out, behind the ribbon counter.

We also find a much higher mortality among pro-
prietors and employees of breweries than among the
same class of individuals connected with distilleries.

80 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

The death-rate among proprietors, managers and
superintendents of distilleries is even fifteen per cent,
below normal. Malt liquor contains from three to
seven per cent, alcohol, distilled liquor about fifty
per cent. But beers also contain nitrogenous nu-
trients subject to fermentation, and the alcoholic con-
tent is too low to have any appreciable deterrent ef-
fect. No less an authority than Dr. Abraham Jacobi
maintained that alcohol is an intestinal antiseptic.
If this is true, the higher the alcoholic content the
greater the protection against fermentation and con-
sequent self-poisoning. Of course, when Dr. Fisk
says "Proprietors of distilleries are obviously not so
directly exposed to temptation," he is simply guess-
ing. If I also should hazard a guess, I should say
that the manufacture of whisky was lucrative, and
the distillery-proprietor could afford to take, and did
take, sufficient time away from his business to ride,
shoot, play golf, etc., and so keep his body in better
physical condition.

It is easy to prove almost any proposition by
figures, if one is careful to select only statistics which
support the contention. What is the effect of alcohol
on those who lead an active life? Here are some
data obtained by Dr. Charles E. Woodruff, surgeon
with the rank of major in the United States Army,
from the observation of about twenty-eight hundred
United States infantry and cavalry on active duty in

MORE FALLACIOUS PROPAGANDA 81

the Philippines in the early days of the American
occupation.

"Approximately n per cent, of the abstainers
died, while about 3}4 per cent, of the moderate
and less than 2 per cent, of the excessive drinkers
died. About 15 per cent, of abstainers were
invalided home, about 9 or 10 per cent, of the
moderate and about 8 per cent, of the excessive
drinkers. About 26 per cent, of abstainers, 24
per cent, of moderate and 24 per cent, of excessive
drinkers deteriorated in health. About 49 per
cent, of abstainers, 64 per cent, of moderate and
66 per cent, of excessive drinkers retained their
health. There were very few who improved in
health in any class, but the percentage among the
abstainers was a trifle higher than among the
excessive and less than among the moderate
drinkers." *

On his return from the islands, Dr. Woodruff
published his conclusions in the New York Medical
Record of December 17, 1904, from which the fol-
lowing is taken:

"In 1902 I obtained a mass of data as to the
physical condition and drinking habits of a regi-
ment of infantry which had been about three
* "Medical Ethnology"; Woodruff, p. 149.

82 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

years in the Philippines, to which was added about
two troops of cavalry of about fifteen months'
service. Each company commander divided his
men into four classes as to health: i. those who
retained health; 2. those who deteriorated in
health; 3. those who were invalided home for
disease, and 4. those who died of disease. The
drinking habits of each man were also given, as
1. total abstainers; 2. moderate drinker, who was
never drunk; 3. excessive drinker, who was occa-
sionally or periodically intoxicated. I know the
figures to be as near the truth as it is possible to
make them, because officers gave me the data, and
their minor personal equations were neutralized.

"I must confess to being somewhat disconcerted
and disheartened at first by the totals; the exces-
sive drinkers were far healthier than the abstain-
J ers, only one-half as many were sent home sick,
and only one-sixth as many of them died. I had
hoped to prove the opposite. . . . The damage
done to these young men by occasional sprees is
not so great as the damage done by the climate to
abstainers. What a lot of misstatements have we
received from our teachers, text-books and au-
thorities !

"I suppose some medical editors would advise
hiding these figures on the ground that they would
be an advantage to the whisky dealers who buy

MORE FALLACIOUS PROPAGANDA 83

Kansas corn- from prohibition farmers. They
would no doubt rather see our soldiers die than let
them know that a drink of wine at meals might
save their lives." (Truly a prophecy of what
was to occur later in the Army camps and in the
United States Navy during the Great War.)
"Think of the statement that 'the claim that the
use of alcohol is desirable in the tropics is refuted
beyond the possibility of discussion/ (Boston
Medical and Surgical Journal, June 21, 1900), a
statement for which there is no basis in fact.
There are no figures, statistics or trustworthy
data in existence upon which such a statement
could be based.

"This attitude in defence of current opinion is
dangerously near to the old one, which we hoped
had disappeared from New England forever; we
can almost hear the echo of that short dark period
when its people said, 'The claim that there are no
witches is refuted beyond the possibility of dis-

cussion.' "

That is a valuable contribution to the subject, by
a man clearly more interested in the truth and bear-
ing of his facts than in clinging to preconceptions
which his own experience has proved to be mistaken.

CHAPTER XIII

THE LABORATORY VS. NATURE

There are many things which we have learned to
use and enjoy in moderation, such as alcohol and
other foods and beverages, fire and ice, steam,
electricity and various familiar agencies, which may
become sources of danger if allowed to get beyond
control. Moderation is of course one of the car-
dinal rules of our existence. Too much of a good
thing is often more harmful than a little of what is
really bad. The immoderate use of alcohol is clearly
detrimental not only to the individual, but also to
society. In well-governed communities drunkenness,
like other excesses, is taken care of in the police
courts or hospitals. It was necessary for the pro-
hibitionist to prove that even the moderate use of
alcohol was harmful, lest, with the proper enforce-
ment of existing laws, he should find himself in the
position of Don Quixote, tilting at his windmills.

In recent years much thought and study have been

given to the nourishment of the body. Many foods,

and alcohol among them, have been the subjects of

careful laboratory examination and experimentation.

The prohibitionists have made good use of the un-

84

THE LABORATORY VS. NATURE 85

favorable side of these experiments to further their
propaganda. In this way they have endeavored to
show that alcohol is not a stimulant, but, on the
contrary, a narcotic, a depressant; that it has no
food or medical value, but is a toxic substance and
definitely injurious, even when used in moderation.
The following comments by Professor W. S. Hall
will serve as an example of the methods adopted.

'The Energy from Alcohol not Avail-
able.— Is the energy liberated in the oxidation of
alcohol in the liver available for the use of
muscles, nervous system or glands? If this ques-
tion is answered affirmatively, then alcohol is a
food. If negatively, then alcohol is not a food.

"All body oxidation may be classified in two
groups: 1. Active Oxidations, which take place
in the active tissues, muscles, nervous system or
glands, — and take place incident to action. Active
oxidations are under perfect control of the ner-
vous system and are proportional to normal ac-
tivity. 2. Protective Oxidations, which take place
in the liver. This class of oxidation-process is
wholly independent of the usual tissue activity,
and is proportional to the ingestion of toxic
substances and independent of muscular action,
brain action or gland action (other than liver
action).

86 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

"If the oxidation of alcohol in the liver belongs
to Class i, the following consequences should be
found: First, the ingestion of alcohol would lead
to an increased muscular power and an increased
capacity for brain work, and increased glandular
activity. Second, the ingestion of alcohol would
serve to maintain body temperature in the healthy
individual subjected to low external temperature.
Third, the increase of muscle, brain or gland ac-
tivity would be proportional to the amount of
alcohol ingested. Now laboratory observations
and general experience show that none of these
things is true: that is, the ingestion of alcohol
decreases muscle, brain and gland work and de-
presses body temperature when external temper-
ature is low. The oxidation does not therefore
belong to Class i.

"If the oxidation of alcohol in the liver belongs
to Class 2, the following consequences would be
found: First, the ingestion of alcohol would be
followed by its early oxidation in the organ in
question. Second, if the oxidation capacity of the
liver is limited this capacity may be overloaded
by exceeding the physiological limit of alcohol.
Third, if the oxidation capacity of the liver is
taxed nearly to its limit, by the oxidation of the
uric acid xanthins and other toxic substances, the
ingestion of alcohol may seriously interfere with

THE LABORATORY VS. NATURE 87

this protective oxidation by overtaxing the ca-
pacity. Fourth, if the oxidation capacity is over-
taxed, an excess of uric acid, xanthin bodies, and
other toxic substances will get by this portal and
reach the active tissues of the kidneys. Now all
of these things take place, so we are forced to the
conclusion that the oxidation of alcohol is a
protective oxidation.

"Alcohol is, therefore, a toxic substance and not
a food in any sense."

Propaganda such as this carries weight with the
layman. He has no means of determining the truth
or falsity of the conclusions. It "listens well," as
they say. Like the child's decalcomania, it brings
out a picture where before there was only a blank,
and if in the picture we find a purple cow or a green
cat, his untutored mind is unable to detect the error.

The thought which the prohibitionists intend to
convey is that alcohol being a poison is not fit for
human consumption. Salt also is a poison. Salt
poisoning is quite common among our domestic
animals, yet salt is a necessary part of our diet.
The first question which naturally suggests itself is,
if alcohol is a poison, why is it produced in the body?

It must be remembered that physiological chemis-
try is still in swaddling clothes. Our knowledge of
the body's processes is very limited and many seem-

88 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

ing contradictions occur. Take, for instance, the
problem of the gastric juice.

The body digests its food by the aid of certain
juices in the digestive organs. These juices are
powerful enough to break down the tissue of any
flesh with which they may come in contact. Why,
then, are they not dangerous to the body itself?
Some animals devour their own species. A pack of
hungry wolves has been known to fall upon a
wounded comrade and completely devour it, includ-
ing its digestive apparatus. If the gastric juice is
strong enough to break down tissue of the digestive
organs of another creature, why does it not have the
same effect upon the stomach that produces it?
Why does not the body digest itself? The problem
may seem quite formidable until we consider the
great resistance of the living cell. It is this resist-
ance which withstands the action of the gastric juice,
as it withstands the toxic effect of salt and alcohol
when properly used.*

* To illustrate the great vitality of the living cell, it may
be noted that laboratory investigations have provided a
method of showing that the life of the tissues may be
preserved even after these have been removed from the^ body.
Dr. Carrel has demonstrated {Journal of Experimental
Medicine, May I, 1912) that by washing cultures of con-
nective tissue in Ringer's solution and then placing them in
a new medium the growth was accelerated, senility prevented
and the duration of life greatly prolonged. Some of the

THE LABORATORY VS. NATURE 89

The best evidence that alcohol is necessary to the
human economy is the fact that the body obtains a
supply through the alcoholic fermentation of sugar
and other carbohydrates, which takes place in the
intestines. The digestive process separates the fit
from the unfit. Alcoholic fermentation is a purify-
ing process. It eliminates much that is harmful in
the natural fruit juices. A pure light wine is a
healthier beverage than unfermented grape juice,
sweet cider or the fruit juices of the soda water
fountain. Many of the arguments which the pro-
hibitionists use so freely against alcoholic beverages
could be applied with greater consistency against the
so-called temperance drinks. Anyone who has
watched alcoholic fermentation in light wines or beer
will probably agree that it were better to have this
take place outside the body instead of in the vital
organs.

Let us look on the subject from nature's stand-
point. The most primitive forms of alcoholic bev-
erages are the wines pressed from grapes, apples and
other fruits. In our forefathers' time, and until
labor-saving devices in manufacture and transporta-
tion had commercialized wine-making, these wines
were produced in the homes throughout America.

cultures were living at the beginning of the third month of
their life in vitro. (See "The Immortality of the Cells and
Tissues": Medical Record, May 11, 1912.)

90 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

The harvest feast of Thanksgiving found the house-
wife bringing to the table her cider, or currant,
blackberry and grape wines, along with the turkey,
the mince pies and other evidences of her culinary
skill. Cider-making is still familiar enough to most
of us, so that we may observe nature's guiding hand
in the process and see how she has planned for our
welfare.

Cider is made from the juice of the ripe apple.
The same juice is obtained when the apple is eaten,
but the fruit contains a lot of bulky roughage which,
by filling the stomach, limits the amount of fresh
juice that can be absorbed in this way. At harvest
time, when the juice is first pressed, the cider is
sweet. But here again nature steps in to prevent
over-indulgence, for the juice remains in this condi-
tion only until fermentation, which begins immedi-
ately, has done its work. Man has been able to
kill the germs of ferment by heating or by the intro-
duction of benzoate of soda or other chemicals, and
thus preserve the juice in its unfermented form
throughout the year. But that this was contrary
to nature's purpose is clearly discernible if we follow
the process of wine-making.

Let us suppose the juice has been pressed and
carefully strained and that we have a clear sweet
cider (or grape must). This is placed in a barrel.
In from twenty-four to twenty-eight hours it will

THE LABORATORY VS. NATURE 91

commence to work and a frothy mucilaginous scum
will rise in a sticky mass through the bunghole.
This frothy scum will be filled with yeast and paren-
chyma and other impurities. This is the first effect
of fermentation and is called by the wine-makers
"purging." It is followed immediately by a less
tumultuous, effervescent fermentation with a rise in
temperature, which continues until all the saccharines
have been turned into alcohol.

We have an ocular demonstration of nature's
efforts to purify her beverage in the column of froth
which rises through the bunghole. When fermenta-
tion is completed, what has been accomplished is
apparent not only to the eyes but to the palate also.
The reader has doubtless often noticed the dregs at
the bottom of a bottle of wine or ale. The small
percentage of impurities to be found in a bottle of
wine which has been carefully drawn off from the
cask to avoid disturbing the liquid, is as nothing com-
pared to the murky mass of lees deposited at the
bottom of the barrel in the process of fermentation.
And these are in addition to the impurities which
are purged through the bunghole. If the lees are
disturbed the wine becomes cloudy and bitter, and to
drink it would bring on intestinal disturbances which
would soon convince the experimenter that the whole
juice of the fruit was only intended by nature to be
partaken of at harvest time. In guarding against

92 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

over-indulgence in the fruit juices, nature has com-
pleted her work by providing the matured wine with
alcohol, which, by causing intoxication, raises the
danger signal for those who would imbibe too freely.
Let us hear what one of our dietitians has to say
on the subject:

"Alcohol is made through fermentation and
distillation, and both these processes would be
impossible without sugar. When we understand
this, we find that we can make alcohol by simply
eating sugar, because this alkaline substance com-
ing in contact with the hydrochloric acid of our
stomach, ferments quickly and causes as much
stimulation to our nerves as though we partook
of the prefermented article in the shape of light
beers or wines.

"Everybody is familiar nowadays with the
usage of giving sugar to soldiers before they go
into battle, or of giving sugar to athletes. But
how few people know that this article of food
is given to these people because it creates an al-
cohol which is taken up by the nervous system
more quickly than the prefermented alcohol in
the shape of wine or beer ! A good pair of kid-
neys eliminates the prefermented article very
quickly, not so the fermenting one.

"A simple knowledge of how wine is made

THE LABORATORY VS. NATURE 93

will explain this question to the reader more
fully. Wine is made by crushing fruit, vegetables
or grains, and allowing the natural sugar of these
foods to ferment. In order to hasten the process
we add cane sugar and water, and let this stand
in a warm place until fermentation has brought
to the surface all waste products, leaving a clear,
watery fluid, according to the ingredients of which
it is made.

"The alcohol made in this manner is concen-
trated before it even enters the stomach, and
through its very density is eliminated much more
quickly than when we depend on the stomach itself
to perform the process of fermentation. The tee-
totaller, without realizing it, creates his stimulant.
Lacking the immediate pleasing effect of alco-
holics, he generally turns into a dyspeptic grouch
— much more objectionable than his friend who,
admitting he wants a stimulant, partakes of a glass
of beer or light wine, and thereby draws his
nervous energy to his stomach. This friend might
be accused of a little undue conviviality, but cer-
tainly he becomes more human than his grouchy
sick friend.

"It must be understood that I am not advocat-
ing the use of alcohol, but wish rather to explode
the mistaken notion that alcoholics are the only
stimulants. Harm comes from partaking of al-

94 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

cohol in moderation only when the function of
the kidneys is impaired, and all liquor should
be excluded from the dietary in such cases. But
how much more should sugar be excluded!

"Sugar is present in all fruits, vegetables and
grains, and such sugar of course should be used.
But the concentrated sweetness of sugar cane,
figs, dates and bananas should be used only in
moderation because, next to the oxygen we
breathe, sugar is the strongest stimulant there is.

"Next to sugar, alcohol is strongest in brandy
and whisky, and these strong liquors should also
be avoided, leaving for consideration the light
wines and beer. The latter is a liquor originally
brewed in Germany, and the English people, brew-
ing it in a slightly different manner, manufacture
ale and porter instead. The foundations of these
drinks are hops and malt. The latter is a product
made by steeping, drying and concentrating grain,
which may be either peas, beans or wheat.

"The water in beer is distilled, and the per-
centage of alcohol is so small that it cannot be
objected to by anyone who thoroughly under-
stands the manufacture of it. Every human being
has his idiosyncrasies, and there are people whose
kidneys are not normal, to whom beer might be
harmful, but to such people meat and sugar are

THE LABORATORY VS. NATURE 95

even more harmful, and the discredit should not
all be given to beer.

"The average teetotaller clothes himself with
the 'mantle of righteousness' because he doesn't
drink alcoholic stimulants. Then he turns into
the next drug store to have some soft drink or
candies, by which he injures himself tenfold as
much as by drinking any of the light liquors.

"Most soft drinks are flavored with syrups, and
I have already shown how we manufacture al-
cohol in our stomachs when we eat sweets. All
sweets turn into an acid, causing fermentation.
They set up diseases more quickly than if we
were to partake of the already manufactured al-
coholic beverages such as light beer and wine." *

That alcohol in some form is necessary to the
human system cannot be doubted. There is one way
and one way only by which prohibition could be
accomplished, and that is by tearing down and re-
building the human machine. If, as science has been
able to demonstrate, this machine has been evolved
through countless steps of evolution from a lower
stratum of animal life, it might be possible through
other countless steps so to change it that alcohol
would no longer be essential for its proper function-
ing. That this is not beyond the bounds of plausi-

* "Triangle of Health"; Arnold, p. 129.

96 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

bility, we have as evidence the other earthly crea-
tures which apparently exist in health and vigor with
little dependence on this gift of nature. The lower
we descend in the scale of animal life, the less re-
quirement there is for alcohol. The fish, the frog,
the lizard, the snake and other cold-blooded crea-
tures are familiar examples. Yet it may be that
alcohol, like oxygen, is one of the immutable essen-
tials for the animal kingdom. At any rate, no animal
capable of free locomotion can dispense with it al-
together. They may use very little, but some they
must have. Possibly the oyster and clam are com-
plete abstainers and represent the ideals of prohibi-
tion at their highest point. Yet their existence
scarcely commends itself as a goal for human aspira-
tion. Whatever evolution brought us from, we have
the habit of preferring to go forward rather than
back. We are content to follow the purposes of
Providence so far as we can glimpse them. And
though there are doubtless some zealous reformers
who believe that if they had the directing of the
universe they could produce a better race and a
better world, most of us are willing to take creation
as we find it.

CHAPTER XIV

THE FOOD VALUE OF ALCOHOL

The food and medical values of alcohol have a
very close relation to each other. Proper nourish-
ment is the foundation of health. The body, by its
own efforts, is able to overcome disease in most
instances, if it can obtain and assimilate its natural
food.

What is food? Stedman's Medical Dictionary
gives: "Food. Anglo-Saxon Foda, aliment, nour-
ishment, what is eaten to supply the necessary nutri-
tive elements. — Nutritive. Nutrition. Latin
Nutrire, to nourish. A function of living plants and
animals consisting in the taking in and assimilation
through chemical changes (metabolism) of material
whereby tissue is built up and energy liberated; its
successive stages are known as digestion, absorption,
assimilation, and excretion; in highly organized
animals digestion is preceded by mastication and
deglutition, and excretion is effected by expiration,
perspiration, urination and defecation." These
functions are carried on by the various organs of the
body, under the control of the nervous system, of
which the brain is the head.

97

98 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

Foods may be divided into two classes: those
which primarily produce tissue and energy, and those
which enable the organs to function. This is a simple
rather than a strictly scientific way of putting the
matter, because all foods serve both purposes. But
the foods in the first class go more directly into the
production of tissue and energy, while those in the
second class work, in a measure, indirectly. For
example : Digestion is under the control of the gas-
tric! nerves. Food, producing tissue and energy,
also creates nerve force — nerve force makes possible
digestion, assimilation and elimination. Foods like
alcohol, by their effect on the nervous system, aid
assimilation and are therefore indirectly assisting in
building tissue and energy. The human body is
often likened to an engine. To carry the simile
further, the foods of the first class may be regarded
ks the gas or steam which produces the driving force,
while the foods of the second class are the oils which
effect the lubrication. Of these, alcohol is the most
important. To deprive the body of its necessary
amount of alcohol will have the immediate effect of
lowering its energy-producing power. Some systems
require more alcohol than others, and to attempt the
artificial regulation of this necessity because it some-
times produces intoxication, is about as sensible as
to ask the motorist to give up the use of lubricating
oil because it occasionally works into the cylinders.

THE FOOD VALUE OF ALCOHOL 99

In infancy the body obtains its supply of alcohol
from milk sugar. The new-born babe begins acquir-
ing the alcohol habit with the first drop of milk it
takes from its mother's breast — the habit of manu-
facturing alcohol for its body's needs. As the child
develops, more alcohol is required, and a taste for
sweets and candies develops. The need for alcohol
is never more plainly demonstrated than at this stage
of our existence. The healthy, romping child eats,
with the greatest eagerness, all kinds) of cakes,
candies, ice cream and other sweets. The result is
an exuberance of high spirits and muscular activity,
while the child with a weak digestion, who must of
necessity control his desire for sweets, is sickly and
unable to play and romp like other children.

During the early years of childhood the body,
except under abnormal conditions, obtains all the
alcohol it requires from the sugars and starches of its
daily diet. If we could go through life as children,
playing and exercising without restraint, and without
the strain of labor and responsibility, it would be un-
necessary to add to our alcohol supply by other
means, except when disease or some unusual occur-
rence made it advisable. But with the approach of
manhood, with its duties and ambitions, comes an
increased demand on the body, and the alcohol sup-
ply must be increased.

This demand, however, does not come to all alike.

ioo THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

A Samson or a Sandow can lift a hundredweight
with less exertion than the man whose muscles are
undeveloped. In the same way the brilliant mind
can do its thinking with less effort, or less friction,
than one more sluggish; and while the latter in the
end may perhaps accomplish just as much, it is at
the expense of greater labor and a greater tax on
the system. Mental effort uses up more nervous
energy than physical labor. The man who sits at a
desk all the time is often more tired at the end of
the day's work than the laborer in the fields. There
is thus a wide variation in the food requirements of
different individuals, in accordance with physical and
mental development, occupation and mode of life.
Any attempt to standardize the daily diet will inevi-
tably work injustice and will result in many cases of
malnutrition and the consequent breeding of disease.
Enforced rationing is dangerous at its best because
of its effect on the nerves. Let us follow the work-
ing of the nerves in the digestive process and see
why alcohol may be necessary for their proper
functioning.

The body selects its food by the senses, and their
messages are transmitted to the brain by the nerves.
The sight of the bright red apple, the smell of the
savory dish of bacon, the sweetness of the lump of
sugar, are all conveyed to the brain over the nerve
telegraphs. The gustatory and olfactory nerves,

THE FOOD VALUE OF ALCOHOL 101

responsible for taste and smell, and the gastric
nerves, which regulate digestion, are integral parts
of one system and may be equally affected by outside
influences. The odors coming through the open
door of a bakery or cook shop will stimulate the
appetite or add to the pangs of hunger. The sight
of blood may have a directly opposite effect. The
taste of a bad oyster will produce nausea long before
any toxic action can occur.

The body adjusts itself to changes of conditions,
but this adjustment does not take place so rapidly
as in self-regulating man-made machines. For in-
stance, to give a concrete case : If a man ordinarily
engaged in office work should spend a day behind the
plow or in some other strenuous exercise, he will
burn up more tissue than his body has been accus-
tomed to restore at short notice. The consequence
will be that for three or four days following he will
be unusually hungry before every meal, and even
though he eat more food, as he almost certainly will,
it will not alter the result.

The body is constantly meeting abnormal condi-
tions. Disease, fatigue, worry, fear, all have their
influence on our nervous system, including the gas-
tric nerves. We often hear the expression utoo
tired to eat." The craving felt for alcohol under
such circumstances is only nature calling for a food
which the body must have before it can return to

102 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

"normalcy." This need may show itself in a desire
for sweets from which the body can make its own
alcohol, or in the craving for a drink, according to
the habits of the individual. Manufactured alcohol
is preferable because it is more easily assimilated.
To attempt to obtain alcohol from sugar or starches,
when the digestive apparatus is worn with fatigue, is
to invite chronic dyspepsia.

The reason for the body's craving for alcohol
under these conditions now seems clear. It has been
recently demonstrated that alcohol acts as an anti-
dote to the effect of disease toxins on the nervous
system, even in the case of some toxins which cause
permanent impairment. If alcohol will thus counter-
act the more serious toxins of disease, it seems only
reasonable to suppose that it will have the same effect
in the case of fatigue toxins. Much evidence has
already been produced to support this conclusion,
which fits in so perfectly with the known facts about
alcohol that there can be little doubt about its cor-
rectness. This, then, is the logical explanation of
the stimulating effect of alcohol, in itself a depres-
sant.

There is another side to the question of the food
value of alcohol, which is generally ignored in the
arguments of the prohibitionists. Alcoholic bever-
ages, particularly the malt liquors, contain other
nutrients which, in combination with alcohol, form

THE FOOD VALUE OF ALCOHOL 103

an easily digested and highly beneficial diet. We do
not make three square meals a day from salt alone
nor do we drink pure alcohol. Many of the argu-
ments against alcoholic liquors can certainly be
modified to take into account the additional nutrients
which these beverages contain.

CHAPTER XV

ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE

There is no drug in the whole pharmacopoeia
which has been more generally employed or has had
a wider field of usefulness than alcohol. Its medici-
nal value was recognized by Biblical and other early
writers :

"Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish,
And wine unto those that be of heavy hearts."

Proverbs xxxi : 6.

Its use as a therapeutic agent goes back indeed to
prehistoric times, where, naturally, we cannot now
follow it. But it seems more than probable that
alcohol originally taught mankind the value of drugs
in the treatment of disease. We can easily conceive
the feeling with which sickness was regarded by
primitive man, as a visitation beyond control. The
sense of warmth and well-being which alcohol pro-
duces may certainly have led our interesting ancestors
to make their first attempts at medical treatment.

To-day, alcohol is as highly regarded for its
medicinal qualities, except by a portion of one med-
ical cult, as it ever was. Yet it has been placed by

stringent legislation quite beyond the reach of the

104

ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE 105

ordinary individual, unless he is prepared to break
the law. The first law of nature is self-preserva-
tion, which is usually considered higher than man-
made laws, even though these are the laws of our
own country. If alcohol is necessary to maintain
life, no statutes, and no methods of enforcement, will
ever be able to prevent its use.

A little knowledge is proverbially a dangerous
thing. It is the hasty, superficial half-knowledge of
the laboratory that has condemned alcohol. For-
tunately, we do not live in the laboratory; and the
theories that are born there are of little value unless
they can be applied to the betterment of our daily
life. Before this can be done, we must have a
fuller, clearer knowledge of the human body. What
we think we know has only led to confusion. Thus
we find alcohol is a depressant, yet it stimulates. It
is a nerve sedative, yet it produces nerve force. It
retards the action of the digestive ferments, yet it
aids digestion. It is no tissue builder, yet it adds
to the body's weight. It lowers the body's tempera-
ture, yet it warms the body. It dulls men's wits, yet
it increases the activity of thought and speech. It
induces sleep, yet it will keep the faculties awake.
It may lower the capacity of the individual worker,
yet it increases labor's output. Itself a poison, it
protects against more serious poisons. There is
probably no drug more complex in its physiological

106 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

action than alcohol. On account of its great power
for good and evil, it may well be considered the
Jekyll and Hyde of the pharmacopoeia. Hare sums
up the pros and cons as follows :

"Clinical experience, too great to be ignored,
stands for the continued employment of the drug.
The drug does not act as a stimulant in the or-
dinary sense of the term, but nevertheless read-
justs the circulation by dilating the peripheral
vessels and influences the protective powers of the
body by affecting the blood-cells or the blood-
serum or the lymph. This belief seems to find
support by reason of experiments carried out by
the author, in which he was able to show that
alcohol produces a distinct increase in the bacteri-
olytic power of the blood in disease, probably by
increasing the activity of the complemental
body."*

Like many of the things which nature has pro-
duced, alcohol will lose its power for harm as soon
as we are able to dispel the ignorance which still
surrounds it. Much has already been accomplished,
and now that prohibition has become a national
issue the work will unquestionably be completed. So
there will be at any rate one good result of the

* "Practical Therapeutics" ; Seventeenth Edition, p. 76.

ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE 107

attempt at prohibition: we shall have a better
knowledge of alcohol.

The science of medicine is passing through a
transition period. The old theory of symptomatic
treatment is being abandoned. The physician of
to-day no longer treats the symptom where it is
possible to strike at the cause. Alcohol may or may
not be a heart stimulant. It may equalize circula-
tion. It may have the property of sparing tissue.
But all these are of secondary importance. To pass
the test of modern medicine we must be able to show
that alcohol will assist the body to remove the cause
of disease. This has now been definitely established,
with the result that the whole structure of the pro-
hibitionist's arguments against the use of alcohol in
medicine has fallen like a house of cards.

Our knowledge of disease, and by this is meant
infectious disease, has been brought to a point where
we are able to classify and distinguish between the
various forms of germ life in much the same way as
we classify the different forms of terrestrial life.
Just as we divide the latter into beasts, birds and
fishes, so the former are classified as necroparasites,
semiparasites, true parasites and tissue parasites.
Of these, the first two produce toxins. The necro-
parasites possess a low grade of infectiousness, that
is, of the power to multiply and spread through the
body, but they cause death by their highly fatal

io8 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

poisons. The germs may be unable to maintain
themselves in normal tissue, but their toxins are
powerful enough to kill, even after the germs them-
selves have ceased to exist. On the other hand,
the semiparasites are highly infectious and aggres-
sive and multiply rapidly in the system. Their
poisons are less deadly, but continued production of
the toxins may prove fatal. These are the germs
with which we have to deal in influenza and many of
our serious diseases.

With the production of a practical germicide, it is
now possible to stamp out these infectious semi-
parasites at any period of the disease, unless, of
course, the case has gone altogether too far for
curative treatment. Under the most favorable cir-
cumstances, when the germicide is given by mouth,
the germs can be destroyed in from twelve to four-
teen hours. Thus it has been possible to measure
the effect of the toxins on the various organs of the
body. Exhaustive experiments were carried on in
influenza and semiparasitic animal infections in
which many thousand cases were treated. In the
course of these experiments it developed that the
effect of the toxins on the gastric nerves sometimes
results in complete suspension of the digestive
functions. Of course this was nothing new. Loss
of appetite indicates impaired digestion. A sick
animal does not eat because his instinct teaches him

ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE 109

that it is useless to put food in his stomach to putrefy
if he is to derive no benefit from it. But these ex-
periments were a conclusive corroboration. They
were carried on as follows :

The germicide was given by mouth. Results
could be expected in from twelve to fourteen hours
if digestion was not impaired. If no results were
obtained, the germicide was given by intravenous
injection, which, in most cases, proved effective. In
an attempt to clear up the gastric disturbance, alcohol
was given with the germicide and an immediate ab-
sorption was obtained, the case responding at once
and thus demonstrating that alcohol acts as an anti-
dote to the effect of the toxins on the digestive or-
gans. To grasp the importance of this fact we must
understand how the body forms its antibodies.

The cells are the active basis of all animal and
vegetable organization. According to Ehrlich's
side-chain theory, which is the best conception of the
phenomenon, a cell is composed of a central nucleus
upon which its life and activity depend. Attached
to the nucleus are a variable number of subsidiary
mouths or receptors (side chains) by which the nutri-
tion of the cell is regulated. These receptors differ
from each other in certain chemical affinities, accord-
ing to the nature of the food molecules to be ab-
sorbed by the cells. The many different body cells
(for example, the blood cells, the nerve cells, the

no THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

muscle cells), varying in nutritional requirements,
account for a considerable variation in the receptors.
Ehrlich conceived that toxin molecules may acci-
dentally possess the same affinity for certain recep-
tors as the food molecules which the latter are ac-
customed to receive under normal conditions. To
the possibility that different disease germs are at-
tracted by a different set of side chains is attributed
the specific immunity which follows various infec-
tions. When infection occurs the germ or its toxin
becomes affixed to a receptor with the result that not
only is the cell deprived of necessary nourishment, but
injury or complete destruction may also follow. The
cell rids itself of this condition by casting off the re-
ceptor, and its loss stimulates regenerative cell activ-
ity to replace the damage. According to Weigert's
law of regeneration, the defect in the cell structure
is repaired beyond the necessary measure. Each
individual receptor which the cell loses is replaced
by numerous mouths, of which the fittest will remain
with the mother cell, the remainder being cast off
into the blood circulation, where they act as anti-
bodies. The same law of regeneration is common
in the vegetable kingdom. If a limb is removed
from a tree, many small branches will spring forth
to supply the requirements of the roots, the most
favored branch crowding off the others, just as in
the case of the new mouths which the cell produces

ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE in

without intending to retain them all. The free re-
ceptors thrown off into the circulation (antibodies)
retain their affinity for the germs and their toxins.
They combine with these, and thus putting an end
to their activities, render them harmless. All this
is dependent on the cells receiving their accustomed
nourishment from the digestive organs. When this
is cut off not only are the cells weakened, but even
the incentive to form new mouths no longer exists,
since there is no food to fill them, no work for them
to do. Thus we see that alcohol, by its antitoxic
action on the digestive organs, may be the saving fac-
tor which enables the body to form the protective
antibodies which are its main defence against
disease.

In the summer of 191 8, when influenza, which
had broken out in Europe in virulent form, was
threatening invasion, but before the great pandemic
had actually reached our shores, the records of these
experiments were laid before the Medical Section of
the Council of National Defence at Washington.
It was not long before the disease found its fatal
way here, and it soon became epidemic. The concen-
tration camps were among the first to suffer from its
ravages. After every other treatment had failed,
alcohol in the form of whisky was resorted to. There
was an immediate drop in the death-rate. One
young buddy who was driving the dead wagon in a

ii2 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

southern camp tells the story that his nightly load of
forty coffins was reduced to three or four through
the introduction of the whisky treatment. Stories
like this continued to come from the camps, but no
move was made on the part of the American Medi-
cal Association to modify its resolution against
alcohol, although the work amongst the soldiers was
in charge of high officials of the association and
they were daily receiving proof of the value of al-
cohol in the treatment of disease. But the Eight-
eenth Amendment had not yet been approved by
the Supreme Court and, if the truth were known,
it might nullify all the work which the organization
had done to further the cause of prohibition. How-
ever, the public was not slow to appreciate the
importance of the facts, familiar to them through
personal experience, the evidence of friends, and the
columns of the press.

CHAPTER XVI

ALCOHOL AND FATIGUE

From time immemorial alcohol has been used by
man to counteract the effect of too great mental or
physical effort, or what we call "fatigue" ; and be-
cause the body responded to alcohol, and relief was
obtained, it was looked upon as a stimulant. This
very natural mistake has been handed down for
generations. Alcohol is not really a stimulant, as
we understand the term. The stimulating effect
which it produces in the tired worker appears to
be due to its power of acting as an antidote to the
fatigue toxins. As long as the effect is there, it is a
matter of little consequence to the ordinary indi-
vidual how it is brought about. Nevertheless, it
is of importance to our subject, for to ignorance
on this point can be traced many of the abuses for
which alcohol has had to shoulder the blame.

Fatigue is nature's five o'clock whistle — the signal
that our day's work should be brought to an end.
In its daily toil the body burns up a certain amount of
tissue. This is replaced by the foods we eat, but
the capacity for replacement is limited by the capac-
ity of the digestive organs. The waste of tissue,

"3

ii4 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

therefore, must also have a limit; and fatigue has
been provided to warn us when this limit is approach-
ing. The more we study the human machine, the
more we find cause to marvel at the Omniscience
which created it.

Our knowledge of fatigue is still very limited.
In 1904 Weichardt announced that he had discov-
ered a specific substance, a fatigue toxin, which he
claimed was the chief cause of fatigue, and against
which the body was able to produce an antitoxin.
To test this theory, Lee and Aronovitch (Depart-
ment of Physiology, Columbia University, N. Y.)
instituted a series of experiments. Cats and rab-
bits were fatigued by running in a revolving wheel.
After the animals were thoroughly fatigued they
were killed, the muscles of the hind legs were re-
moved and the muscle juice extracted. This juice
was then injected into the peritoneal cavity of guinea
pigs. As a "control," a similar experiment was
carried out, the muscle juice of non-fatigued animals
being used. The results in both cases were some
disturbance of respiration and an immediate fall of
temperature. The fall continued from vthirty min-
utes to an hour and was followed by a slower return
to normal. Some of the animals died on the fol-
lowing day. This occurred in the case of the "con-
trol" animals as well as in those which had been
treated with the juice from the fatigued muscles.

ALCOHOL AND FATIGUE 115

It would therefore appear that there is in the nor-
mal muscle a substance which, when brought into
contact with other parts of the body, produces a
toxic effect.

The body eliminates its waste tissue through the
circulatory system. It is carried off in the venous
blood and is finally emitted by way of the lungs.
Every muscle is supplied with blood vessels and
lymphatics. With this information to build on we
may conclude that the use of the muscles eventually
releases certain toxic substances which, finding their
way into the circulation, are the direct cause of
fatigue.

We may now go a step further. When the fatigue
toxin reaches the circulation, an antitoxin is set up.
Thus we find the individual, let us say the black-
smith, who uses his muscles regularly in the course
of his daily work, can do this without being tired.
On the other hand, the office worker who suddenly
takes up some strenuous exercise is rapidly fatigued;
but if he continues the exercise his body will become
accustomed to it and he will no longer feel fatigued,
because the antitoxins have been produced. There
is however a limit to muscular exertion, and when
this limit is reached the muscles draw on the other
parts of the body and the nerves become affected.

The process of mental fatigue is not so clear. We
know that the nerves can be trained to withstand a

n6 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

certain amount of strain, just as our muscles can be
trained. But it is apparent that the brain cannot be
used — or at any rate is not so used in ordinary life —
with the same regularity as the muscles of the work-
man. The bricklayer performs the same task day
after day, while the business man may be suddenly
called upon, after a week of routine, to decide some
momentous question which will require the best
thought of which he is capable. If from this effort
antitoxins are set up, they are gradually eliminated
until some new crisis brings a reproduction. The
manual worker, for his part, may suffer another form
of mental fatigue. A common case is the fatigue
which is the result of monotony of employment or
environment. American industries have been stand-
ardized to a great extent. A job which necessitates
doing the same thing over and over again, attending
interminably to the same detail, affords no mental
relaxation. The mechanic who bores the same-sized
hole in wood or metal thousands of times during the
work-week becomes subject to a nervous strain, which
may be more or less severe according to the dis-
position and habits of the individual. A country
boy, coming from a farm where the work and sur-
roundings are varied and entering upon a job of this
sort within the four blank walls of a machine shop,
will feel the strain more than the experienced mill
hand. Monotony such as this may be described as

ALCOHOL AND FATIGUE 117

a passive monotony in contradistinction from the
active, aggressive monotony which is forced upon the
mind of the worker in the never-ending shop noises
or eyestrains — the steam hammer of the boiler shop,
the whir of machinery, the dizzying revolution of
wheels, and so on. The wearing effect of any such
form of monotonous repetition was recognized by
the Chinese in one of their well-known punishments
— the tickling of the soles of the feet until the
nervous system was completely shattered.

These are some of the causes of the everyday
changes which occur within the body and must be
taken into account in any study of the effect of alcohol
upon the human system. To make a man the me-
chanical subject of a laboratory experiment without
any consideration of his previous history, and feed
him alcohol in the hope of obtaining accurate data
as to the effect of the drug, is merely ridiculous.

Here is a simple test which the reader, if he is
accustomed to using alcohol in moderation, can make
for himself. If he has spent a quiet morning, with
nothing to disturb his physical or mental poise, let
him take a drink of alcoholic liquor — a cocktail or
whisky — at luncheon time. In a very short while
the slight feeling of exhilaration will wear off, and
in its place will come a feeling of depression. Let
him, however, take the same drink before his evening
meal — -after a hard day's physical or mental labor —

n8 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

and there will be a sustained feeling of stimulation.
Where alcohol is taken to overcome the effect of
fatigue, depression iseldom follows; for just as
alcohol will counteract fatigue, so the fatigue toxins
seem to prevent the depressant action of alcohol.

Have you ever noticed how much more easily the
manual worker becomes intoxicated than the man
who works with his brain? The fatigue antitoxins
which physical labor sets up appear to be more con-
stant than those which may be produced by mental
effort. Consequently, in the steady manual worker
there is little to offset the intoxicating effect of
alcohol. There are many instances to show the
slight effect alcohol will have on those who are under-
going severe mental strain. A colonel of artillery
in one of the armies of the Allies tells the story that,
during the German drive for the Channel Ports in
the spring of 191 8, he and his officers on some days
drank a quart of Scotch whisky apiece with no more
effect than if it had been so much water. A farm
hand may become intoxicated on three per cent, cider,
because his work does not cause mental strain. A
mill hand may drink with impunity on Friday night
an amount of alcohol which, if taken on Monday
after his day of rest, would make him drunk.

One of the strongest arguments for prohibition
was the harm done by the corner saloon. A large
part of the saloon patronage came from the laboring

ALCOHOL AND FATIGUE 119

classes. Their ignorance of the proper use of alcohol
often led to excesses, and thus the saloon became a
public nuisance. Would it not have been better to
attempt to dispel some of the ignorance which has
surrounded alcohol than to attempt to enforce a
nation-wide prohibition which is bound to result in
failure? The question has already been answered
by the disastrous results which followed war-time
prohibition and are now emphasizing the contempt-
of-nature provisions of the Eighteenth Amendment.
So many arguments and data have been advanced
to show the harmful effects of alcohol that the reader
will doubtless require on the other side more than
the mere theory of the value of alcohol as related to
fatigue. Some years ago the subject was brought
home very forcibly to the author, and as a result a
series of observations was undertaken to determine
the value of alcohol as an antidote for fatigue in
athletics. For this purpose (to say nothing of other
purposes) no sport can equal golf. The golf stroke
itself, from the short put to the full stroke, requires
the most exact coordination of mind and muscle.
During the swing the head of the club travels varying
distances, from a few inches to over twenty feet.
The most perfect rhythm must be observed, the club
head travelling at its maximum speed just as it comes
in contact with the ball. While the player may make
his strokes instinctively, nevertheless every oppor-

120 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

tunity is given for mature deliberation and a fault
which may spoil one stroke can be corrected at the
next. Thirty-six holes of golf require about six
hours of physical effort, and there is no greater
mental strain in any sport than can be found on the
putting green when the match is close and the prize
worth winning. In the full stroke the value of mus-
cular power is fully demonstrated. The three-quar-
ter and half strokes and the wrist shots supply a
perfect test of mental control. To apply the proper
speed to the club head, to play a ball from a cuppy
lie and drop it within a few feet of a hole one hun-
dred and thirty yards away, is a test of delicacy of
touch which will compare favorably with the finest
laboratory measurements. The results are all set
forth accurately on the score card.

In the observations made for comparative pur-
poses, many prominent golfers unwittingly took part.
The results were almost invariably the same. Where
a moderate amount of alcohol was taken at luncheon
time, the play of the afternoon compared more favor-
ably with the morning round than where total absti-
nence was observed. If more than enough alcohol
to counteract the fatigue of the morning were taken,
the toxic effect of the drug could be seen in the falling
off of the play. The following scores, with the
distances, are submitted to demonstrate to our labo-

ALCOHOL AND FATIGUE 121

ratory friends that a man may still take a cocktail
occasionally without impairing his efficiency.

Golfer No. i Date: July 8, 1906

Alcohol. One Martini cocktail, one Scotch high-
ball : approximately 45 cubic centimetres.

Conditions. No golf for two weeks previous to
day of score. Morning round mediocre, score not
kept.

123456789 Total
Distance 427 276 106 240 580 555 396 210 155

Score 54246 5443 37

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Distance 300 344 309 275 382 470 255 140 260

Score 544455433 37

74

This score established an amateur record for the
course. As every golfer knows, the mental strain
increases towards the end of a record score, which
one misplay may spoil.

Golfer No. 2 Date: October 22, 19 16

Alcohol. Two Martini cocktails, one Bass' Ale :
approximately 75 cubic centimetres.

Conditions. Eighteen holes played the afternoon
before. No golf on the five previous days.

123456789 Total
Distance 212 312 326 140 540 606 640 180 350

Morning 354366745 43

Afternoon 344355634 37

122 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

IO II 12 13 14 15 l6 17 l8

Distance 380 360 455 565 280 150 363 120 225

Morning .556543534 40
Afternoon 5 4 6xxxxxxi5

Total for Morning 83
Total for Afternoon 52

This score was made in the finals of a club cham-
pionship, which fact formed the mental hazard. The
match ended with a victory on the twelfth green.
An interesting sidelight is that on the same day the
year before the same contestants met in the finals of
the same championship. For that occasion the
scorer had been on a training-table diet for two
months and played the whole match without alcoholic
stimulation. In the morning round he recorded an
eighty-two, but in the afternoon he began dropping
strokes and was finally defeated on the fourteenth
green, his score showing ten strokes worse than the
one recorded here.

From these and a great many similar records it
seems clear that when alcohol is taken only in suffi-
cient quantity to offset the effect of fatigue, it does
not interfere with accuracy of performance or the
will to win.

CHAPTER XVII

FATIGUE AND DISEASE

The craving for alcohol which fatigue produces is
a natural craving, that is to say, the body is only
expressing a demand for something which it really
needs and for which it will be the better, once it has
been obtained. Fatigue is a very real cause of
bodily impairment. How serious a factor it may
become is now fully recognized. Sleep is the sover-
eign remedy, but as an emergency treatment alcohol
supplies the most effective antidote. Sleep is not
always obtainable when it is most needed; the slug-
gard may be drowsy with over-indulgence, while
the keen worker and keen brain, the strained and
exhausted nerves, may look in vain for nature's
quiet hand to knit up "the ravell'd sleave of care."
Or time may press; we cannot leave our work un-
finished and go calmly to bed; the task, whatever it
may be, must be finished, and finished efficiently. We
have only twenty-four hours a day to live on, as
Arnold Bennett points out; and sometimes alcohol,
used with judgment, will enable us to get and give
full value for every one of the twenty-four. To

withhold alcohol under conditions which clearly call

123

i24 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

for its use, is a very serious responsibility. The
prohibitionists may affect to ignore this responsibility,
but they lay themselves open to the specific charge of
making their own profit through others' loss. In
this connection one may properly point out that in
spite of its resolution professing to condemn alcohol
absolutely under all conditions, the American Med-
ical Association permits its members to make an
enormous profit through their monopoly of prescrib-
ing alcohol for medical purposes. A little more
outward consistency might at any rate be expected.

Fatigue may cause injury by its direct effect upon
the system, or it may act indirectly by lowering our
powers of resistance and thus lay the system open to
attack by the germs of disease. One of our leading
American pathologists has expressed his firm convic-
tion that in the course of time fatigue would be
recognized as one of the main causes of disease;
and Sir James Paget is quoted as writing: "You will
find that fatigue has a larger share in the promotion
or transmission of disease than any other single
causal condition you can name."* Nervous prostra-
tion and other similar affections are examples of the
direct effect of fatigue. The disastrous ending of
Mr. Wilson's Western speaking tour in favor of
the League of Nations showed how serious may be

* "The Human Machine and Industrial Efficiency" ; Lee,
p. 79.

FATIGUE AND DISEASE 125

the effects of fatigue caused by great mental and
physical effort following a long period of overwork.
If the President, to set an example to the nation in
the observance of war-time prohibition, deprived
himself of necessary alcoholic stimulation, he was a
victim of the ignorance which brought this measure
upon the country, and his misfortune can never be
wholly repaired now. It is so easy to destroy, so
hard to rebuild. But valuable as alcohol may be in
such emergencies, to arrest destructive action and re-
store the equilibrium of the system, we find its
greatest usefulness in the relief of the lighter cases
of fatigue-strain, which, if persisted in, will lower
our powers of resistance and impair our physical
fitness. Every athletic trainer knows the danger of
getting his squad too "fine." Overtraining is the
result of a greater effort than the recuperative powers
of the body can take care of, the cumulative effect of
a small surplus of fatigue produced daily or at fre-
quent intervals, with the consequent injurious action
on the body.

The individual cannot stand alone. His physical
deterioration is a menace to the whole community.
We are only just beginning to understand the mean-
ing of virulence in infectious disease. It is possible
to breed the germs of disease and increase their
natural powers precisely as we are able to improve
the breed of our draft horses or dairy cows. Nour-

126 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

ishment and congenial surroundings are the founda-
tions of this improvement. In the impaired body,
which is able to offer only a weak resistance to the
progress of an infection, the organisms of disease
find a host altogether too hospitable; they feel
happily at home and are able to attain their highest
development. A little care, an ounce of prevention,
— in cases such as this an ounce or so of alcohol, —
would have saved the proverbial pound of cure. Yet
how often do we hear the expression, "Prohibition
means nothing to me, I never drink alcoholic
liquors"? The man whose life runs so smoothly
that he never needs manufactured alcohol may or
may not be a fortunate individual, but he will find
that prohibition, if enforced, will have for him a very
real meaning on account of the malnutrition it will
be responsible for among his neighbors whose need
for alcohol is distinctly different from his.

The great influenza pandemic already referred
to,* which reached this country in the late summer of
19 1 8, is an example of the serious conditions which
are to be expected as a natural consequence of fatigue
and malnutrition. For four years Europe had been
undergoing the physical and mental strain of the
greatest war in history. In most of the belligerent
countries, control of foodstuffs was resorted to and
laws were passed reducing the consumption of

* See Chapter XV.

FATIGUE AND DISEASE 127

alcoholic beverages. While it is too much to say,
with so many conditions favoring disease, that de-
priving the workers of necessary alcohol was the
primary cause of the scourge, nevertheless it is a
factor which cannot be ignored. If more attention
had been paid to the study of fatigue and its allevia-
tion by alcoholic stimulants and other proper mea-
sures, the sweeping disaster might have been avoided
or at least minimized. Sixteen months after the
beginning of the war, the British Committee on the
Health of Munition Workers gave the following
picture of conditions in Great Britain : "Taking the
country as a whole the Committee are bound to
record their impression that the munition workers in
general have been allowed to reach a state of reduced
efficiency and lowered health which might have been
avoided without reduction of output by attention to
the details of daily and weekly rests." It is difficult
to find a more monotonous occupation than the manu-
facture of munitions. In March, 1917, the Food
Controller, Lord Devonport, reduced the annual out-
put of beer in the United Kingdom from 26,000,000
barrels, which had been allowed for the year ending
March 31, 1916, to 10,000,000 barrels. Six months
later the Health of Munition Workers Committee
wrote : "The conditions are not the same now as
they were in the early days of the war; not only
have large numbers of the youngest and strongest

128 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

workers been withdrawn for military service, but
those who remain are suffering from the strain in-
separable from a continuous period of long hours of
employment. . . . The effects of the strain may
even have been already more serious than appears on
the surface, for while it is possible to judge roughly
the general condition of those working in the factory
to-day, little information is available concerning the
large number of workers who, for one reason or
another, and often because they find the work too
arduous, are continually giving up their job." In
many of the other countries the conditions were far
worse.

The danger to the health of a community which
may result from depriving the normal human being
of alcohol was convincingly demonstrated by our own
experience during mobilization. When the draft
called our millions to the colors, it took the pick of
the nation's manhood. Men in the prime of youth-
ful vigor were selected after a careful medical exam-
ination and sent away to the concentration camps.
It is true that the camps were sometimes crowded,
but many of these men came from the crowded quar-
ters of our large cities. It is also true that they
were unable to choose their own food, but their
rations were selected by men of experience and should
not have affected their physical condition adversely.
The one great dietary change which came to them

FATIGUE AND DISEASE 129

when they entered the Army was that they were no
longer able to obtain the customary alcoholic drink to
meet their bodily requirements. They were then
put through a severe course of physical training, and
in addition to the fatigue produced by this muscular
exercise, they were continually subject to the mental
strain of the thought of separation from home and
family to take part on a foreign soil in the greatest
war in history. It is no wonder that epidemics broke
out in these camps, nor is it surprising that the death
rate from diseases like pneumonia should have been
two or three times the normal. When we hear
stories of the great improvement which prohibition
has wrought in some homes by the reformation of the
drunken husband, we must think also of the fathers
and mothers whose sons were carried off in these
camp epidemics through official ignorance of the
proper use of alcohol. Drunkenness is a vice, but
it is curable. No one can cure death.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ECONOMIC SIDE OF PROHIBITION

Before discussing prohibition more closely from
the economic standpoint, let us consider some of the
conditions by which we are surrounded — conditions
under which we are permitted to exist. We are all
subject to certain natural laws, — man and beast, fish
and fowl, insect and plant life. From chaos to the
present day there has been, it is hoped, a gradual
improvement in terrestrial life. That this improve-
ment may go on, nature endeavors to maintain an
even balance in her dealings with her creatures, so
that those who by their own efforts rise above the
general mass may go forward, while those who slip
back fall finally to oblivion. Where man has gained
a thorough knowledge of particular conditions, he has
frequently been able to improve on nature's methods.
But too often, through a facile enthusiasm born of
ignorance, he has run counter to nature's purposes
and has thus been brought to disaster. Take as an
example some of the legislation designed to protect
wild life. Bounties have been offered for the de-
struction of certain predatory birds, because the in-

130

THE ECONOMIC SIDE 131

jury they did seemed obvious; yet when they have
been driven from the locality, it has been found that
these very outlaws had been keeping down dangerous
vermin, which became an uncontrollable pest as soon
as nature's guard had been removed. This leaping
before looking is typical of prohibition to-day. The
average temperance worker may have excellent inten-
tions, but he knows little or nothing about alcohol
from the scientific side. He has had the usual expe-
rience— an intemperate friend or acquaintance, some
information gleaned from police courts or police
reports, some misinformation absorbed from the
ranting of an ignorant enthusiast, mistaking denunci-
ation for demonstration. Yet through organized
effort the prohibitionists have been able to impose
their will upon the legislatures of the country and en-
graft upon the fundamental law a measure which
should never have passed beyond the dignity of a
village ordinance. It is an extraordinary case of
wholesale modern dragooning. But intolerance does
not cease to be vicious simply because it is exhibited
on a vast scale. Congress cannot repeal the laws of
nature. Be sure of one thing : evolution will never
bring any species down to the level of its unfit. And
no nation can adopt measures which sacrifice its
manhood and womanhood for the benefit of its
drunkards and debauchees and still hold its economic
position. The country will go forward, but there

132 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

will be a good deal of wreckage to be cleared out of
the way.

A nation's economic position is dependent on — i.
natural resources; 2. industry; 3. commerce; 4.
thrift. With industry is included the health and
efficiency of the workers, and thrift embraces the
thrift of the people themselves and the conservation
of the nation's finances and natural resources. Prac-
tically all national wealth is the result of industry,
for however favored a nation may be in natural
resources these can only be brought into marketable
form as the result of labor. To reap the reward of
industry, labor's product must be bartered. If a
nation is able to produce a surplus in excess of its
own needs, it may add to the national wealth by
exchanging this surplus for some form of permanent
property, or for some product which can be produced
more cheaply abroad, thus releasing labor for more
remunerative production at home.

It is still too early to estimate the effect of prohi-
bition on our industries : first, because of lack of
effective enforcement, and second because, following
so closely upon a great world upheaval, during which
labor's powers of production were taxed to the limit
with the natural consequence that wages rose with
the increased demand, many disadvantages which
might be attributed to prohibition may be due wholly
or partly to other conditions. It is much easier to

THE ECONOMIC SIDE 133

disprove the economic arguments of the prohibi-
tionists than to arrive at definite conclusions on the
other side from the records now available. It will
require a long time and a careful study of statistics
before we shall be able to gauge the full effect of the
new order of things upon the country. While certain
outstanding facts may be considered, the question as
a whole can only be discussed in principle.

What will be the effect of enforced prohibition
upon labor? A requirement of primary importance
for productive industry is that labor must be well and
suitably fed : because if the body is undernourished,
its capacity for physical effort is lowered, and because
starvation, whether sudden or gradual, naturally
breeds discontent and may lead to revolution in the
future as in the past. But a man may eat his fill and
yet starve his body. Any radical change of diet may
cause malnutrition until the people have accustomed
themselves to it. Malt liquor has been an important
part of the laborer's diet. It is no easy matter to
provide a substitute. Since national prohibition
went into effect the country has been agitated by
strikes and other forms of labor unrest. Lowered
production is everywhere apparent. Here is the
report of a special grand jury that has been looking
into the cause of housing shortage in the City of
Cleveland :

134 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

"The testimony adduced indicates conclusively
that it requires approximately twice as long with
the same number of men to erect a house to-day
as it did in pre-war times. Impartial tests show
that it takes twice as many carpenter hours to do
carpenter work on a building as it did five years
ago. Bricklayers lay less than half the number of
bricks; paperhangers, painters, and plasterers all
do less than half the work in the same time that
they did five years ago.

"Manufacturing firms which make and sell
building materials prove by their records that
while wages have gone up 200 per cent, in some
cases, labor costs have gone up 400 per cent.,
indicating that the employees are getting double
pay for one-half the work as compared with before
the war."

These conditions have been duplicated in many of
the cities throughout the country, and though wages
have been tending to come to a lower level under the
pressure of industrial necessity, there has been no
recognizable readjustment of the work-rate in the
direction of pre-war efficiency. The very thing which
has occurred — deterioration — was predicted by the
leaders of labor. The following is the opinion of
Mr. Samuel Gompers, President of the American
Federation of Labor, as to the effect that prohibition

THE ECONOMIC SIDE 135

would have upon the working man. This effect is
only the natural sequel of causes which science has
fully explained.

"It is not a question of right or wrong. It is
not a question of whether we approve or dis-
approve of beer or drinking. It is his habit. And
when you invade a man's habits, what happens?
You upset that man. You unsettle him. Uproot-
ing one habit uproots others. And you find that
the man who was heretofore satisfied to labor as
he had been laboring, to go home nights and talk
or read, becomes restive and discontented. In-
stead of sitting down to rest and read, he goes out
into the street. There he meets other men, rest-
less and unsettled like himself. And in the rubbing
together of their mutual grievances there are
sparks and sometimes fire.

"I have heard it stated, and I believe it, that
the birth of the Bolsheviki was in prohibition.
Harmful as vodka was, it enabled the Russian
peasant to find surcease from the dull monotony
of his life. Without it he found only trouble and
torment and the desire to tear down what he could
not rebuild. And to-day Russia lies bleeding, tor-
tured. It was too big a price to pay.

"It is time for all of us to recognize the fact
that a thing like prohibition cannot be attained by
executive decree.

136 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

"It cannot be pounded, with heavy hand, from
the top downward. It must, like democracy, flow
from the bottom upward."

In the prohibition propaganda, much capital has
been made of the alleged foodstuff waste incfdent to
the manufacture of alcoholic beverages. Dr. Fisk,
in his book on alcohol, says :

"Exact figures are not obtainable, but it is con-
servatively estimated that probably 110,000,000
bushels of grain are utilized in the manufacture of
alcoholic beverages. Grapes and molasses (152,-
000,000 gallons) must not be forgotten in con-
sidering these matters. Grapes utilized for sweet
wines when converted into raisins constitute a
most valuable preserved food, and this wine-grow-
ing industry might well be transformed into a
food-growing industry.

"It has been estimated that enough grain is
used in this country in the manufacture of alcoholic
beverages to supply 11,000,000 loaves of bread
daily.

"In addition to the grain used in the manu-
facture of beer, as at least approximately stated
in the proclamation of the Brewers' Board of
Trade (70,505,488 bushels), there should be con-
sidered the 39,000,000 bushels of corn, rye and
malt used in distilling spirits, one-half of which

THE ECONOMIC SIDE 137

was used for industrial purposes in 19 16. Also
there must be considered the labor of those en-
gaged in the brewing and distilling business as well
as in the liquor-selling business. The loss to the
country involved in depriving real wealth-produc-
ing industries of the labor of these men and the
destruction of coal, gasoline, steel, wood and other
material that is used in the alcohol industries, must
also be figured in the bill against alcohol — the
purely economic bill.

"The plea, therefore, that grave industrial and
economic injury would result from prohibiting the
manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages
naively ignores the real effect of such a measure,
the diverting into healthful occupations of those
now engaged in unhealthful occupations that
involve the destruction of food and the manu-
facture of a poison instead of the production of
wealth."*

No objection whatever is made by the prohibition-
ists to what they please to term "food waste" and
"loss to the country involved in depriving real wealth-
producing industries of labor," etc., when it occurs
in the process of manufacturing fruit syrups for the
soda water fountain or unfermented beverages from
grapes, apples and other fruits.

* "Alcohol — Its Relation to Human Efficiency and Lon-
gevity"; pp. 147, 152-4

138 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

Dr. Fisk's grain figures look large by themselves,
but, like so many of his statements, they lose their
impressiveness as soon as they are placed in their
proper perspective. The United States produces
annually about 5,400,000,000 bushels of grain, so
that 110,000,000 bushels is only about two per cent,
of the total. If the grain used in the manufacture
of alcohol and alcoholic beverages were all loss, the
cash equivalent would still be less than we pay for the
activities of the rat. As a purely business proposi-
tion, extermination of the rat would be a better and
cheaper undertaking than elimination of the liquor
industry.

But even conceding that as the demand for grain
for home consumption increases, the 110,000,000
bushels used in the manufacture of alcohol may take
on a growing importance: what then? In the first
place, there is a good deal of acreage that the farmer
does not always use to its full extent. It is better
for him to plant and sell than deliberately to re-
strict his output. In the second place, this alcohol
grain was not entirely lost to other industries.
Thirty-five per cent, of the grain used in brewing beer
was returned to the farmer as a dairy food. Soren-
sen, a Danish authority on the pure food question,
has recently demonstrated that when barley, which
is the principal grain used by brewers, is fed to cattle
only 5 1 per cent, of the food value is utilized. On

THE ECONOMIC SIDE 139

the other hand, when fed in the form of brewers'
grain 61 per cent, of the nutritive value is retained.
In the third place, will prohibition stop the alleged
waste? To-day our brewers are using the same
grain in the manufacture of non-alcoholic beers. The
difference from the economic standpoint is that the
product has lost much of its food value.

There is still another side to the question. The
people are now buying grain and making their own
beer. Signs like the one below have become familiar
in the grocers' windows :

Make Your Own at Home

Ask Us How

While home-made beer has the full food value, the
grain from which it is made goes into the swill pail
and is lost to the farmer and cattle breeder. Yet the
argument of grain waste is still being used to pro-
mote the cause of prohibition. Dr. C. W. Saleeby,
the British authority on eugenics and an advocate
(but scarcely authoritative) of temperance, speak-
ing at the international conference against alcohol-
ism, expressed the opinion that England must adopt
prohibition as a grain conservation measure. The
childish simplicity of some minds is truly remark-
able. The law of supply and demand cannot be
long evaded by governmental fiat. The economic

140 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

question to be considered is not precisely how much
grain, grapes or molasses is destroyed in the manu-
facture of alcohol, but whether it is better and
cheaper for the nation to obtain its alcohol in this
manner, or through sugars, starches and other
alcohol-producing foods in the form of candies,
sweets, etc. A rather interesting comment on Dr.
Saleeby's statement is provided by the Act of Parlia-
ment which has just been passed, removing many of
the war-time restrictions on the sale of manufactured
alcohol and allowing the brewers and distillers to
return to the pre-war standard of strength.

How will prohibition affect our commerce ? Wine
making is an important industry in many of the
countries of Europe. Before the Great War the
United States received large consignments of wines
from France, Italy and the Rhineland, and whiskies
and ales from Britain. Our markets for these prod-
ucts have now been closed to Europe. This is
particularly unfortunate because of the condition of
foreign exchange. When the new Greenback party
came into power in the United States they set an
example, in their "elastic currency," which started
the printing presses of the European nations in the
busy production of paper money as a war measure.
In June, 19 14, the world's stock of gold coin and
bullion far exceeded the amount of paper money in

THE ECONOMIC SIDE 141

circulation. The ratio of gold to paper at that time
was estimated at $141 gold to every $100 paper.
According to the latest figures, although the gold
supply has increased, the ratio to-day (excluding the
Bolshevik government) is only $19 gold for every
$100 paper. Statistics issued by the British Govern-
ment in November, 19 19, showed that the expansion
of currency, taking 19 13 as par (100) was:

In the United States (up to May, 19 10) 173

In Great Britain (August, 19 19) 244

In France (June, 1919) 365

In Italy (April, 19 19) 440

Substantial additions to the paper currencies of
the Allied Nations have accrued since these statistics
were compiled.

Great issues of paper money have been made in
Germany. The Bank of Germany lost 1,458,508,-
000 marks gold during the year following the arm-
istice, but added 13,669,154,000 marks to its note
circulation. The gold cover on November 15, 191 8,
was 14 per cent, and a year later it had shrunk to
3 . 1 per cent. This currency inflation has of course
been reflected in the rates for foreign exchange, as
will be seen by reference to the following table.
Serious depreciation has occurred even in the case of
Great Britain, although she is producing large quan-
tities of gold in her colonial possessions.

142 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

Parity Oct. 1920 Aug. 1921
Great Britain Sterling $4.8665 $3,435 $3.65
France Franc •I93° -0645 .0772

Italy Lira . 1930 -0374 .0432

Germany Mark .2380 .0141 ,0119

It is perfectly obvious that foreign paper is no
longer effective as a medium for negotiating a pur-
chase in other countries. What is the solution?
These nations must return to the ancient system of
barter, or, what is but one step removed, must
establish credits by the shipment of goods.

A substantial part of the export trade of Europe
consists in the shipment of fine wines, brandies and
other alcoholic liquors. These commodities must
now find another market, for no one is foolish enough
to suppose that France, Italy and the Rhineland will
abandon their wine-growing industries to please
American financiers who preach prohibition in their
churches while their business associates invest their
money in corn products, sugars and other alcohol-
producing foods, which will become increasingly
necessary with the enforcement of the Eighteenth
Amendment. The credits set up by the wine-grow-
ing countries will be lost to America, and will be used
to make purchases in other countries; cotton from
Egypt, grain and beef from The Argentine, etc.
In turning away this business we are deliberately
encouraging trade with our competitors. Every de-

THE ECONOMIC SIDE 143

partment-store owner is familiar with the advantages
to be gained by offering attractive bargains to bring
customers into the shop. The loss of our wine-
growing customers, and the trade which these exports
to other countries will encourage, will undoubtedly
lead to great commercial changes — how great we
cannot now foresee.

The following schedule should be found interest-
ing for reference.

Importations from Europe of alcoholic bever-
ages for the year 19 13 (the last year before
the trade was interrupted by the war).

England

Malt liquors and other beverages

in bottles or jugs 872,964 gals.

in other coverings 575,245
Brandy 4*699 pf. gals.

Cordials 16,764 " "

Whisky 57,143 " "

Gin 703,070 " "
All other spirits distilled 33*836 " "

Champagnes and other sparkling

wines I5>729 doz. qts.

Still wines in casks 32,352 gals.

Still wines in other coverings 5,586 doz. qts.

Scotland

Malt liquors and other beverages

in bottles or jugs 11*273 gals,

in other coverings 5*969 "

144 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

Brandy

326 pf. gals.

Cordials

939 " "

Whisky

895,026 " "

Gin

4,950 " "

All other spirits distilled

6,034 " "

Champagnes and other sparkling

wines

2,915 doz. qts.

Still wines in casks

2,581 gals.

Still wines in other coverings

725 doz. qts.

Ireland

Malt liquors and other beverages

in bottles or jugs

461,422 gals.

in other coverings

676,650

Brandy

610 pf. gals.

Cordials

23 " «

Whisky

162,17s " "

Gin

3.135 " "

All other spirits distilled

342 " "

Champagnes and other sparkling

wines

Still wines in casks

35 gals.

Still wines in other coverings

204 doz. qts.

France

Malt liquors and other beverages

in bottles or jugs

71 gals.

in other coverings

Brandy

487>445 P^ gals.

Cordials

190,027 "

Whisky

739 "

Gin

544 " "

All other spirits distilled

5,656 " "

THE ECONOMIC SIDE 145

Champagnes and other sparkling

wines 246,361 doz. qts.

Still wines in casks 232,152 gals.

Still wines in other coverings 227,273 doz. qts.

Italy

Malt liquors and other beverages

in bottles or jugs

in other coverings

Brandy 10,980 pf. gals.

Cordials 168,569 " "

Whisky 245 " "

Gin 4 " "

All other spirits distilled 9,005 " "
Champagnes and other sparkling

wines 1,575 d°z- qts«
Still wines in casks 1,912,500 gals.

Still wines in other coverings 236,134 doz. qts.

All Other European Countries
Malt liquors and other beverages

in bottles or jugs 95,J93 gals*

in other coverings 4,978,397

Brandy

97,604

pf. gals.

Cordials

174,368

u

u

Whisky

6,337

u

ii

Gin

139.352

((

u

All other spirits distilled •

117,011

u

u

Champagnes

and other sparkling

wines

14,120

doz.

qts.

Still wines ir

1 casks 1

,713*619

gal

s.

Still wines in

other coverings

173.295

doz.

qts.

There is probably no more important influence on
national thrift than the methods employed by the

146 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

government in raising the necessary funds to meet
the national expenses. The question of what is the
best form of taxation has been agitated by all politi-
cal parties. Prohibition has deprived the treasury
of over $1,000,000,000 in taxes,* and this loss must
be made up from some other source, — a very serious
problem, coming as it does at a time when the coun-
try is overburdened with taxation. The Dry party
has attempted to belittle the issue by statements that
the loss will be made up by the saving which the new
order of things will promote and that the excise tax
is an immoral tax, based on drunkenness and vice.
This is sheer nonsense. There is probably no better
form of taxation than the liquor tax. Compared
with our present income and inheritance taxes, it is
highly moral. The excise tax sat lightly on the
people. For those who used alcohol in moderation,
it was negligible. It was an appreciable tax only
on luxury and waste and acted as a restraint to self-
indulgence, except in the case of those improvident
people who like to indulge in luxury for its own sake.
On the other hand, the income and inheritance taxes,
in their graduated form, impose a burden on the
industrious and thrifty for the benefit of the shiftless
and improvident. In addition to all this, there is

*The figures given by Professor E. R. A. Seligman of
Columbia University when testifying before the Senate
Finance Committee.

THE ECONOMIC SIDE 147

the very considerable cost to the taxpayer of enforc-
ing the amendment, for the necessary moneys for
administering the Volstead Act and state laws like
the Mullan-Gage Act certainly cannot be obtained
from fines and penalties unless our revenue agents
are prepared to encourage law-breaking.

In computing the expense of prohibition, we must
add the increase in our food bill, for in limiting the
sources from which alcohol can be obtained (and
unquestionably the malting of grain is cheaper than
any other method of producing it), the price of a
necessary commodity has been raised, whether it is
produced naturally in the system or is obtained by
manufacture.

Eventually we shall be able to make an approxi-
mate estimate of the monetary cost of prohibition,
but no one will ever be able to calculate the price we
shall have to pay through the impairment it will
cause in the morale of the nation. Hobson, the
professional prohibitionist, has estimated that at the
time the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect
there were one million heavy drinkers in the United
States — less than one per cent, of the population.
To-day there are many millions of law-breakers, for
the people have resented the intrusion upon their
personal liberties and are not obeying the law.
America has grown great because of the freedom
which was guaranteed to her people under the Bill of

148 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

Rights given to us by the Fathers, This freedom has
attracted some of the best blood of the old world,
and the nation developed it under the Constitution.
The men who were able to conquer a wilderness were
able to conquer self. But the national character
has now fallen so low that it must be taken in hand
by a paternalistic government. It is a strange turn
of the wheel of fortune that to-day, when the example
which we set has borne fruit and democracy has
spread throughout the world, the freedom which we
once enjoyed should be distorted and strangled by
bureaucratic regulation.

CHAPTER XIX

THE IAW AND PERSONAL LIBERTY

The legality of the Eighteenth Amendment has
been upheld by the Supreme Court. A majority of
the states, through their legislatures, have decided
that prohibition is for the best interests of the coun-
try, and according to the court's decision they had
the right so to amend the Constitution. The court
has ruled that every technical safeguard that the
Fathers provided has been fully complied with. The
decision is of momentous importance to the people
of America because of the questions of the rights of
property, state rights and personal liberty involved.

There is a condition which no form of popular

government has been able to guard against — the

ignorance or apathy of the people themselves. In

this case ignorance was organized — organized by

selfish, sordid interests which hoped to profit by the

new order of things. There is but one way in which

this condition can be met by a law-abiding people;

that is, by education and repeal. In the case of

prohibition this is all the more difficult because the

movement has been clothed in a false mantle of

righteousness, by which the real situation has been

149

150 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

concealed. The weakness of the whole proceeding
from the legal standpoint is shown by the fact that
its promoters deemed it necessary to amend the Con-
stitution, to nail the flag of prohibition to the mast-
head as it were, beyond the reach of recall. If the
measure had been wise, this would have been un-
necessary. A law must pass the test of wisdom to
survive. No form of enactment can prevent a
vicious law from becoming a dead letter.

Law is the accumulated experience of humanity
codified for use in the regulation of human relations.
All law has its foundation in the laws of nature. By
his inability to govern wisely, man has shown only
too often that his interpretation of nature and na-
ture's requirements was at fault. In every age,
from the dawn of history to the present day, there
have been periods when he has been led astray and
has forgotten that there are limits to his lawmaking
which nature has imposed and beyond which he can-
not go. Whatever contradicts the fundamental
naturally cannot prosper.

It is becoming more and more of a practice in
legislation to place the interest of the community
above the rights of the individual. We must not
forget that the community is made up of individuals
and that any injury to the latter may react upon the
former. Prohibition is a serious invasion of the
property rights of the individual. One of the pre-

LAW AND PERSONAL LIBERTY 151

dominant human instincts is our desire to own and
enjoy what we have acquired as the result of our
own labor. We have this instinct in common with
the lower animals. It is the right of ownership with
all that goes with it which induces the squirrel to
gather nuts for his winter store. Nature prescribes
individual ownership of what is necessary for individ-
ual development. This is the rock on which all
socialistic schemes have split, from More's Utopia to
Bolshevism. For large numbers of men, unless a
spirit of almost inhuman self-sacrifice becomes more
prevalent than we have any reason to expect, will
never work for a state or community of all sorts
and conditions, including the shiftless and lazy, as
they will work for their own interests.

The right of possession, the right to own property,
is fundamental in the laws of civilized nations. Land
is the most enduring form of property. The titles
to real estate are jealously guarded by law. Land is
valuable primarily for what it will produce. The
right of ownership carries with it the right to dispose
of the products of the soil, including alcohol. That
there are some people who make an improper use of
alcohol is not a sufficient reason for preventing the
landowner from selling his product, thus depriving
him of a part of the value of his land. To prohibit
the sale of alcohol, for the sake of those who abuse it,
is no more just or right than it would be to prevent

152 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

the farmer from selling his wheat because there are
some who injure themselves by overeating. There is
an old saying that man digs his grave with his teeth.
It has been computed that for every man who drinks
himself to death there are eleven who die from over-
eating. But we have no constitutional amendment —
unenforceable, of course — to prohibit the sale of
meat or bread. The absurdity would be too self-
evident even for the shallowest type of propagandist.
Yet they cannot see the absurdity of prohibiting the
sale of alcohol, which nature has made essential for
the well-being of the human system. The fact that
a medical labor union has denied this elementary
scientific fact — and then proceeded to profit finan-
cially to an enormous extent by denying its denial (in
practice) and prescribing alcohol for medicinal pur-
poses— does not prove that nature has made a mis-
take and should be duly corrected. It simply proves
that the medical authorities made no mistake in
seeing that a monopoly in a vital commodity would
be extremely lucrative.

A practical test of the wisdom of any enactment
is to try to put it in operation. As a secondary
though not always reliable test, we may inquire as to
the knowledge and probity of the legislators who
passed upon the law. It is little to the credit of
those responsible for the adoption of the Eighteenth
Amendment that they ignored the failure of prohibi-

LAW AND PERSONAL LIBERTY 153

tion when put to a practical test in other countries
and in sections of the United States; nor does it
speak well for their intelligence that they were will-
ing to disregard a fundamental principle in our
government, that in matters of intimate concern to
the individual and the home the states are better
fitted than the federal authorities to decide upon
suitable action.

When the Constitution was adopted and the
United States became a nation, the Founders rec-
ognized the principle of states' rights. Even at
that time the difference in climatic and other condi-
tions made it plain that there were certain matters
which could only be regulated properly by the states
themselves. The f arseeing wisdom of those builders
for future generations has become increasingly evi-
dent with the expansion of our territories. What
was but a fringe of states along the Atlantic seaboard
has become a great nation, extending from the At-
lantic to the Pacific, from Alaska to Florida and the
tropical Philippines. The fact that this expansion
occurred during the railway age prevented the far
greater differences of opinions and customs that
would have been inevitable at an earlier period in
the world's history. But the differences that exist
cannot be ignored by statesmen or economists, and
prohibition should certainly have been left for regu-
lation to the states, which understood and could pro-

154 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

vide for local conditions and opinion. It is typical
of the ignorance which surrounded the subject that
the legislators of the granger states of the West
should have presumed to pass on an enactment regu-
lating the habits of the manufacturing and commer-
cial population of the East; that the farmers of
Kansas should attempt to tell the workers in the
brass factories of Connecticut or the sailors of
Rhode Island and Massachusetts what they must or
must not eat and drink. We might as well expect
the State of Florida to dictate to the citizens of
Alaska what they must wear and at what hour they
must go to bed. Nature is the only authority whose
dictation fits the conditions.

The extent of the prohibition propaganda is even
now perhaps not fully realized. It was limited only
by the size of the fund which the interests behind
the Anti-Saloon League were willing to supply. We
can get some idea of the amount of money spent an-
nually for prohibition purposes from the budget
which the Anti-Saloon League gave out early in 1920,
after prohibition had become an accomplished fact.
This budget carried the stupendous total of $27,-
920,300. There is a good deal of persuasive force
in practically twenty-eight millions of dollars.

The people's representatives, like the people them-
selves to a certain extent, were deliberately cor-
rupted— not with cash, but with sophisms. For

LAW AND PERSONAL LIBERTY 155

years false information on alcohol has been pounded
into the public, and our legislators have absorbed it.
They may have the best intentions without having
infallible intelligence. Corruption is corruption
whether it is of morals or of mind. It was cor-
ruption in Shakespeare's time. It was thus that Iago
was able to warp the mind of Othello. It is cor-
ruption to-day. Are we going to permit laws passed
by such methods to stand upon the statute books?
There is no such thing as personal liberty if we must
be constantly on our guard against this kind of legis-
lation.

Let us look a little more closely into the
methods by which these modern Iagos were able to
sway popular opinion and influence our legislators.
We can pass over the appeals which were made to
the lowest side of their natures, for although stories
of intimidation and coercion are current, in a na-
tional movement such as this these would have but
a limited influence. That bribery may have been
used we will not question. We are only too familiar
with the temptations that beset our public officials,
and we have become accustomed to almost daily dis-
closures of graft in government departments.
Where there are so many professional politicians we
must expect some corruption of a gross kind. Law-
makers are not the only lawbreakers: every class
has its objectionable elements. But those who could

i56 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

be reached by admittedly fraudulent methods were in
the minority. A large majority of the men who
voted for prohibition were either convinced that it
would be for the good of the country or were willing
to give it the benefit of the doubt and let it have a
trial. If it proved a failure, that would be the surest
way to end the agitation among their constituents at
home.

In bringing legislators to this point of view, the
stand which medical authorities had taken against
alcohol was the deciding factor. When they wrote
the word "Poison'' across the label of the whisky
bottle, it accomplished far more for prohibition than
all the other propaganda put together. No more
convincing argument could have been used, especially
among those fathers and mothers whose children
were just approaching manhood or womanhood.
The father was besought to save his boys from the
temptations that he as a young man had been sub-
jected to. It possibly never occurred to him that it
would be better to teach children how to use alcohol
properly, just as they are taught to ride and swim, or
to drive an automobile. Would it not have been
better for the indulgent mother to teach her children
self-restraint rather than turn their moral and phys-
ical welfare over to the United States Government,
as if they were foundlings of the nation? Will our
women, now that they have received the respon-

LAW AND PERSONAL LIBERTY 157

sibility of the suffrage, attempt to evade their natural
duty of caring for their own offspring? What will
be the effect upon the characters of future gener-
ations if this policy of parental suicide is continued?

It was among the women of the country that the
medical propaganda was most effective. The
mother in caring for her children through their early
illnesses has come to rely on the family physician,
and the trust which he has personally inspired has
taught her a respect for official medical opinion.
The practising physician stands between the people
and the medical politicians. His word goes unques-
tioned because of general ignorance of the fact that
his medical efficiency is limited by a strict control
exercised by the leaders of his union. To use an
expression of one of the shining lights of the pro-
fession, the practising physician is only the plumber
who uses the lead pipe which is given him. The
practitioner is exploited by the leaders of organized
medicine just as the ironworkers, the carpenters and
masons are exploited by the Sam Parks and Bob
Brindells of the building trade. The disastrous
results to medical practice are every day more ap-
parent.

You can scarcely have forgotten the great influenza
epidemic, when the people died by thousands and the
dead lay unburied in the receiving vaults and under-
taking establishments throughout the country. Long

158 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

before the outbreak of the pandemic science had
mastered the disease, but the knowledge was sup-
pressed by the medical ring for selfish reasons. Do
you think these men would hesitate at such a little
thing as conveying false information on alcohol to
our legislatures if it served their own ends ? When
we realize the toll which disease is exacting from old
and young alike, when we think of a life like Theo-
dore Roosevelt's sacrificed to medical ignorance or
indifference, it is only too apparent that new methods
are badly needed, and that the revolt against the
medical organization, which the prohibition contro-
versy has so largely developed, must not end until
present evils have been rooted out and the health of
the nation has been placed in safer hands.

CHAPTER XX

THE LABOR UNION

In a country as large as the United States there
are naturally many and varied interests, continually
increasing with the development of the nation. What
was once chiefly an agricultural community is now
divided into urban, suburban and farming districts,
railway and mining centres, mill towns, etc., with
different problems to meet and different ways of
looking at daily life. Each interest has grown in
importance, and this has been reflected in legislation.
Our industrial life has also been split up into its
classes, — capital and labor, the employer and the
employed, the producer and the consumer. Too
often these classes have clashed, and they have lost
sight of the fact that the welfare of the country as a
whole depends upon the cooperation of all sections
and groups.

No interest has grown in recent years as has
the labor union, which is largely a development of a
democratic form of government. The professional
politician has turned from the organization of politi-
cal bodies to the more profitable occupation of organ-
izing labor. Some undesirable features have fol-

159

160 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

lowed, and the legitimate purposes of cooperative
effort have not always been adhered to. Labor
unionism, so far as it really helps the worker, is of
course a good thing. If it interferes with the rights
of others, as so often happens, it must be condemned.
Where it runs counter to clear economic laws it
becomes impossible, and the sooner this phase of the
situation is cleared up the better for all concerned.

A brief review of certain aspects of trade unionism
will bring out their bearing on the prohibition ques-
tion.

The introduction of machinery, with its many
labor-saving devices, has brought new problems into
our industrial life. The greater output which can
now be obtained has increased the value, or let us
say the power, of capital. This in turn has put a
premium on thrift and has added to the hardships
of the lazy and improvident. For capital is nothing
more than wages or some other form of income
which the receiver has been able to save and then
apply to lighten the task of the worker. The pres-
ent vast accumulations of capital are both the result
and the cause of efficiency.

We have only to look back to the early days of the
American Colonies to realize the striking changes
which have occurred through the development of our
national industries. At the time when the Virginia
and Plymouth Colonies had become firmly estab-

THE LABOR UNION 161

lished, a majority of the colonists were landowners
and were able to support themselves, if need were,
upon the products of their own land. The early
settler was able to build his own house, raise his own
food, and supply his own fuel and part of his cloth-
ing. His children, when old enough, furnished him
with additional labor. He asked little from his
neighbor except companionship and mutual protec-
tion against their common enemies.

With the growth of the colonies, trades and pro-
fessions sprang up. The man who devotes himself
to any one occupation, as the cobbler or carpenter,
can do a better job and in a shorter time than the
man who occasionally turns his hand to that par-
ticular trade. The specialists invested their earnings
in better tools (their capital) or in labor-saving
devices, as in the case of the miller who built his own
mill. Thus it became advantageous for the land-
owner to employ these expert workmen, who could
do better and yet cheaper work than he could do for
himself. (What would the colonists have thought if
a Plumb had arisen among them with a plan to turn
the mill which the miller had built with his own hands
over to his employees?) But it was not always
profitable for the employer to have work done for
him, because there were idle moments in his own day
which would have been lost if he could not employ
them in doing some of the things usually assigned to

1 62 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

others. No workman, however expert, can compete
against the idle time of his employer. It may sur-
prise some of the dwellers in our cities to hear that
many farmers to-day, in addition to raising and
marketing their money crop, produce most of their
own food, even raising and grinding their own flour
and meal and curing their own meats, and also doing
their own mason and carpenter work and various
other things to fill in the spare time.

The development of labor-saving devices is every
day making it more difficult for the individual to
compete with the machine, because his own time is
becoming more valuable. Take as an example the
service which is rendered by the railroads. Compute
the expense of a trip from New York to Boston on
foot or on horseback — the time lost, the hotel bills
incurred — and compare this with the cost of the
railroad ticket. Such time-saving devices have added
to the importance and power of the labor operating
them. But no industrial union has ever attempted
to prevent the individual doing his own work himself.
He may be denied the assistance of organized labor,
but that is as far as they have ventured to go. If a
man wishes to walk to Boston he is still at liberty to
do so. It is vastly important to the development
of our national life that the individual should be free
to act for himself, not merely for the encouragement
of initiative and invention, and so on, but because

THE LABOR UNION 163

the standard of organized effort is thus raised or at
least maintained. Without the bracing effect of in-
dividualism, combinations would often deteriorate as
the result of the very advantages they can command.

It has remained for the medical union to violate
this principle. They have not only endeavored to
control the practice of medicine, but have also tried
through legislation to force their services upon the
individual by placing curative agents beyond his
reach, as has been done in the case of alcohol. As
some perhaps may question the propriety of putting
associations which have always posed as scientific in
the same category as the organizations of ordinary
labor, it should be remembered that they themselves
have sought this classification. In the Bremer
County case, which was carried up to the Supreme
Court of Iowa, the medical organization successfully
defended itself by pleading the right of "labor" to
organize. And further, their strikes, boycotts and
other labor union methods have been fully exposed
in courts of this country and Great Britain.

The industrial unions have followed blindly the
lure of higher wages held out to them by their
leaders. They did not see that by standardizing
labor and thus putting a premium on poor workman-
ship and a lowered output, they were increasing the
cost of necessities to themselves as well as to the rest
of the country. They have only recently begun to

1 64 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

realize that wages can be forced so high that they
cannot afford to accept them. The laboring man
is not an economist; he cannot be blamed for his
short-sightedness. But it is one thing (and quite
serious enough) for the labor unions to attempt to
interfere with the law of supply and demand, and
regulate the market for labor. It is another thing,
and altogether too serious, for a medical union, in
its frenzied efforts to control the profession, to bar
the advance of science in the effective treatment of
disease. Even the most thoughtless or ignorant can
understand the harm resulting from this phase of
labor unionism. And the laboring man has been the
greatest sufferer.

Let me ask you, Master Carpenter: Do yon
think of the bonnie golden-haired daughter who used
to meet you at the gate of an evening to take your
dinner pail when you returned from your work? Of
course you do. She has seldom been out of your
thoughts since the day when you took her little body
to the cemetery. It was a labor union that deprived
you, deprived your physician, of what might have
saved her life. — And you, Mr. Coal Miner. You
have given the country a good deal of trouble in
recent years. Do you think of that young wife so
soon to become a mother who was carried off in the
great influenza pandemic ? Do you know that it was
medical ignorance that was responsible for the high

THE LABOR UNION 165

death rate among pregnant women, and that a labor
union kept the knowledge of proper treatment from
the physicians of the country? — And you, wives of
the trainmen whose leaders held a pistol to the head
of Congress to force the Adamson Law upon the
country. You were rather proud of that achieve-
ment, were you not? Many of your sons died in
the epidemics of the army camps. Your loss would
have been easier to bear if your boys had had the
glory of a soldier's death upon the field of battle.
But to be stricken down like rats in a camp epidemic
was hard, very hard. Do you know that it was a
labor union in control of the medical departments of
the government that stood in the path of science, and
so was able to continue improper treatments that
have been failing in these diseases for two thousand
years or more? When you talk with your Plumbs
about unionizing our transportation system, look
first and see what the union has done for our medical
departments.

When the opponents of national prohibition under-
took a careful inquiry into the various forces behind
the movement, the medical departments at Washing-
ton were one of the first subjects of investigation.
What followed was almost beyond belief. They
found men, American citizens, wearing the uniform
of the United States Army in war time, obeying the
rules of their union but defying the laws and the Con-

1 66 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

stitution of the United States. These men were
permitting disease to go unchecked rather than inter-
fere with the interests of a private organization of
which they were members. Is it any wonder that
the country has been flooded with false information
on alcohol when the people must rely for their med-
ical knowledge on public servants such as these ?

CHAPTER XXI

ENFORCEMENT

Can national prohibition be really enforced?

A fundamental error in dealing with the liquor
problem is the conception of alcohol as a habit-form-
ing drug. The prohibitionist has all along held to
the theory that once alcohol was abolished, the re-
generation of the drunkard would follow automat-
ically. If this were true, the enforcement of the
Eighteenth Amendment would be a simple matter
compared with the problem with which the country
is now faced. But if we accept the more enlightened
view that alcohol is a necessary food, enforcement
becomes all but impossible. No one will stand for
compulsory starvation. The hunger striker piay
accept self-imposed starvation for the sake of a
principle, but no one, if he can help himself, will
permit starvation to be forced upon him by others.
Therefore, to enforce prohibition the necessity for
alcohol must be done away with.

We shall have a better understanding of the en-
forcement problem if we go straight to the question
of the reformation of the drunkard. Most people

are more or less familiar with the methods employed

167

1 68 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

in the institutions for the reform of inebriates. When
the chronic drunkard takes refuge in one of these
asylums, he is first weaned from the alcoholic drink.
Sugars are substituted, and his system is accustomed
to making its own alcohol. His body is built up by
wholesome food, rational recreation, fresh air and
exercise. Then the attempt is made to create within
the patient an aversion to alcohol. In some of these
cases the cure is permanent, in others the drunkard
returns to his old habits. Where the institutions
have failed is in losing sight of the fact that to cure
alcoholism permanently, the need for alcohol must
be eliminated.

In many instances, alcoholism is brought about
through other habits of the individual. The old
drink habit is compelling, but where we have a com-
bination of this with a crying need of the body, we
have a force which it is almost impossible to control.
Take, for example, the son of wealthy parents with
no special interest in life except his own amusement.
His existence becomes monotonous, and it has al-
ready been shown that monotony, by its effect on the
nervous system, contributes to the need for alcohol.
When such a man has fallen into the drink habit and
has then "taken the cure," the chances are that,
unless he finds some new interest in life, he will
return to his old indulgences. If not, the nerves
may become affected and the system laid open to

ENFORCEMENT 169

attack by disease. Dr. Fisk tells us, uIn the expe-
rience of the forty-three (life insurance) companies,
among those who had taken a cure, but remained
total abstainers up to the time of acceptance, the
mortality was 35 per cent, above the normal."*
When we have a better understanding of the liquor
question, the reformation of the drunkard will be
easier. But the present problem of reforming the
whole United States along the lines laid down by the
prohibitionist is one which staggers the imagination.
We must either choose between alcohol or disease,
or readjust the lives of all our people. The brass
worker must leave the foundry for some less nerve-
racking employment. The sailor must give up his
voyages. Disease, worry, fear, must all be elimin-
ated, and then, perhaps, prohibition can be enforced.
Instead of prohibition bringing on the millennium, we
must first have the millennium before we can expect
prohibition.

The situation as it stands to-day is that a necessary
commodity, a food which the people must have, has
been taken away from them and put in the hands of
agents of the government to be doled out as they see
fit. The natural result has been that the price of
alcohol has risen to an abnormal figure. When a
condition like this arises we shall always find people

* "Alcohol — Its Relation to Human Efficiency and Lon-
gevity" ; p. 25.

170 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

who are willing to risk the penalties of the law in
order to reap a golden harvest only too easily
obtained. But in the present case there is the fur-
ther element that as so many of our citizens look
upon prohibition as an encroachment upon their per-
sonal liberties, the lawbreaker is finding encourage-
ment from all classes of society. Men of the highest
character and attainment, statesmen, bankers, law-
yers, authors, artists, business men and day laborers,
all alike, are not only countenancing these law-
breakers, but they are violating the law themselves.
They deny the right and the power of the govern-
ment to supervise their personal habits and manner
of life. There were many who thought, because
they had given up alcohol at one time or another and
had felt the better for it, that they would welcome
prohibition. They did not realize the difference be-
tween abstinence by mental resolve and an absti-
nence forced upon them. Nor did they know that in
many instances their fall from the water wagon was
due to a need of the body which they did not know
how to control. And so there are many good people
who, while believing in prohibition theoretically,
are now drinking more than is good for them out
of protest. As Mr. Irvin S. Cobb has said so
characteristically and exactly, prohibition simply
prohibits sobriety among people who would other-
wise be sober.

ENFORCEMENT 171

The enforcement law has brought with it a law-
lessness on the part of the people never before known
in the annals of the nation.* Violations of the
Volstead Act have been followed by a wave of crime
which can be traced directly to prohibition. The
crimes committed vary in seriousness from infrac-
tions of the rules of the road by speeding auto-
mobiles of the rum runners, to the most callous
murder. Between these two extremes are all sorts
and kinds of criminal offences, — forgery, counter-
feiting, smuggling, blackmail, extortion, illicit dis-
tillation, burglary and highway robbery, the sale of
deadly concoctions, and the debauching of public
officials. The details have appeared repeatedly in
the newspapers and magazines. The reader may
therefore be spared any repetition. The corruption
of government agents is indeed a serious phase of the
situation, for it has added to the power of the corrupt
politician. The practical politician is familiar with
the numerous opportunities for illicit profits which
are always connected with measures for the regula-
tion of public conduct. The health boards and the
building departments of many of our cities have

* William H. Moran, Chief of the Secret Service Bureau
at Washington, testifying before the Appropriations Com-
mittee of the House of Representatives, stated that the year
1920 (the first year of constitutional prohibition) was the
greatest criminal year in the history of the secret service.

172 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

been hotbeds of graft, but as a breeder of nation-
wide corruption no previous legislation has ever
equalled the Volstead Act. It would be interesting to
know how many votes were gained for the Eight-
eenth Amendment by the prospects of the rich
graft to be obtained in its enforcement. If there is
anyone who doubts this, let him look at some of the
characters appointed to carry out the provisions of
the law — men so low that it has been an easy matter
for the crook and impostor to impersonate them.
Take the case of the enforcement agent who killed
a chauffeur during a "wet" raid in New York City.
His record is one of a long series of crimes. His
early offences include petty larceny and the passing
of worthless checks. He served four years and
•seven months of an eight-year sentence in the In-
diana State Penitentiary. He then broke his parole
and came East. He was convicted of robbery and
sent to Sing Sing prison, where he served a six-
year term. His last offence was killing the chauffeur,
for which he was tried for murder in the first de-
gree, and acquitted, through the able defence of a
United States District Attorney. Even after his
record was known, he was carried on the payroll of
the United States. While this may be an extreme
case, it shows the type of men to whom the govern-
ment intrusted the mission of improving our morals,

ENFORCEMENT 173

for prohibition is still being bolstered up by this plea.
We are now beginning to understand the reason
why so many of the states that have gone dry, stay
dry. The Eighteenth Amendment has created a new
brand of prohibitionist, the ex-saloon keeper and the
cheap politician, with their long retinue of heelers
who are realizing enormous profits through the
illegal sale of alcoholic liquors at fancy prices. If
an attempt were made to repeal the amendment,
these men would be found lined up in its defence
with the forces of the Anti-Saloon League. All this
has added to the public resentment, which has been
growing steadily since the passage of the enforce-
ment legislation. The people of the states where
the largest part of our population is located have not
favored prohibition. This is true of nearly all the
original thirteen states. Back in the 'fifties, thirteen
northern states adopted prohibition, but they soon
abandoned it, with the exception of Maine, where
with the aid of the bootleggers the prohibitionists
were able to retain the statute. An analysis of the
vote on national prohibition shows that in states
with a total population of over 63,000,000 people
there either has been no recent expression of popular
opinion, or the people have voted against it. In
some instances, legislators chosen at the same election
in which the people of the state voted against prohi-
bition, reversed the popular decision and voted for

174 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

the Eighteenth Amendment. There is much the
same feeling against prohibition in these states as
there was in our forefathers' time against the Stamp
Act, — with this difference, that the Stamp Act was
imposed by a government in which our people had no
voice, while prohibition was adopted by the very men
whom the people elected, and they feel that these
men have betrayed them.

To the resentment of the wets has been added a
growing resentment on the part of the drys. Many
a prohibitionist believed that prohibition would
stamp out drunkenness. He is now beginning to
realize that in its practical application, at any rate,
prohibition is a failure. Light wines and beers have
been almost done away with. Whisky, gin and other
beverages of high alcoholic content have taken their
place. Whereas before prohibition these high proof
liquors were bought largely by the drink, they are
now purchased by the quart, the gallon or the case.
Quite often, when once a bottle is opened, it is not
put away until it has been emptied.

The records of our police courts and hospitals are
the best evidence of the futility of the Eighteenth
Amendment as a temperance measure. When na-
tional prohibition first went into effect, there was a
temporary falling off in the number of recorded
cases of drunkenness, because the regular channels
by which alcoholic liquors had been obtained ran dry.

ENFORCEMENT 175

It was not long, however, before new sources of
supply were found. As the people began to adjust
themselves to the change, the fact was recorded
in an increasing number of cases of alcoholism. The
conditions in New York City, the largest city in the
Union, are typical of those in all parts of the country
where prohibition has found no popular support.

The following is the record of the arraignments
in the city magistrates' courts for the first seven
months of constitutional prohibition :

Month Borough of Manhattan New York City

January 39 67

February 65 152

March 181 342

April

214

423

May

249

501

June

244

471

July

227

495

For the quarter ending December 31, 19 19, the
total number of arraignments was 936. During the
quarter ending June 30, 1920, 1395 cases were
arraigned.

The hospital figures tell the same story. Here is
the record of the cases of alcoholism admitted to the
wards of Bellevue Hospital, Manhattan, and Kings
County Hospital, Brooklyn, for the first nine months
of the years 1919 and 1920 :*

* War-time prohibition went into effect on July 1, 191 9;
constitutional prohibition on January 16, 1920.

176 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

Bellevue Hospital

Month

1919

1920

January

244

103

February

209

49

March

226

94

April

228

99

May

272

no

June

209

113

July

182

125

August

124

166

September

116

155

Kings County Hospital

Month

1919

1920

January

114

27

February

88

n

March

76

25

£fril

82

47

May

77

53

June

63

53

July

50

59

August i to Aug.

19

33

32

August 19

to Sep.

21

40

93

Here is a summary of a report by a special inves-
tigator for Leslie's Weekly, after a careful survey of
conditions throughout the country:

"It is estimated that two in every five homes of
the land have their own private stills or beer-
brewing apparatus.

"In New York anyone with a friend and the
price can obtain booze by the glass or in quantity.

ENFORCEMENT 177

The same is true of Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati,
San Francisco — all of the larger cities.

"Despite the Eighteenth Amendment there is
more drunkenness in the United States to-day
than ever before. Drinking is done in secret and
surreptitiously, and yet the police blotters in nearly
every city reveal an increase in the number of
arrests for drunkenness.

"In Philadelphia the police records show 300
per cent, more arrests for intoxication from July
1 to November 1 than for the same period last
year and prior to the prohibition enactment.

"Twenty million quarts of whisky entered the
United States from Canada through Detroit alone,
from January 1 to September 1 of this year."

It is not to be wondered at that there are grave
doubts as to the wisdom of the law. The stronger
this feeling grows, the more difficult the enforcement
problem becomes.

What have the men whose duty it is to enforce
prohibition to say on the subject? Mr. James F.
Shevlin, supervising prohibition agent for the New
York district, in a published statement was quoted as
saying: "I say that prohibition is being enforced.
If a man, in order to get a drink, is compelled to go
after it by stealth and to pay enormous prices for
the Vlrinks, isn't that prohibition?" That, Mr.

178 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

Shevlin, is the prohibition of the bootlegger and his
confederate, the corrupt politician, but it is not con-
stitutional prohibition. Mr. Shevlin was transferred
shortly after this statement was made. Mr. Frank
L. Boyd, who succeeded him and who has since re-
signed, described enforcement of the Volstead Act
as "a thankless and a hopeless task." He has given
some idea of the difficulties of enforcement in a
statement which has appeared in the press :

"We have two hundred enforcement officers in
this state. The federal government's appropria-
tion for enforcement of the Volstead Act is
$5,000,000. We have twenty men to cover the
St. Lawrence River front and another twenty to
guard all of Lake Erie. It would take the entire
First Division to begin to patrol this state's water
front and end smuggling. We have one hundred
and ten enforcement agents in New York City.
There are something like 12,000 policemen in
New York City, and yet they are not able to stop
burglaries and robberies with the undivided sup-
port of the city. Yet a hundred and ten men are
trying to enforce the liquor law, which it appears
most of the town does not care much for."

Our own experience is similar to that of all coun-
tries in which prohibition has been attempted. In
China, it produced a nation of opium users. In

ENFORCEMENT 179

Sweden, nation-wide prohibition was abandoned, be-
cause it was found that it resulted in home-distillation
to such an extent that individual inebriety gave place
to family drunkenness. Twenty-three years after
Kansas went dry, Carrie Nation began her crusade
against the saloons of that state. During the next
four years she made a world-wide reputation as a
reformer by wielding her hatchet in wrecking the
barrooms of Kansas.

Prohibition, under the Volstead Act, has followed
a course which must have been foreseen by anyone
familiar with the body's need for alcohol. We can-
not doubt that present conditions were foreseen by
the astute politicians of the medical ring. The more
the scandal grows and the worse conditions become,
the more disposed the people will be to insist on a
modification of the law which will offer them some
relief. As for the prohibitionist, if he cannot have
a bone-dry country, he must accept modified prohi-
bition as the next best thing. Such a plan has al-
ready been suggested. It has been proposed that
the government purchase all the remaining whisky
stocks in the country at a cost variously estimated at
from $100,000,000 to $500,000,000 of the people's
money, and turn them over to the physicians to dis-
pense. This might not end bootlegging or home-
distillation. With the people in their present mood,
and with the experience they have acquired, these

180 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

could only be stopped ,at a cost which no nation
could afford to pay in defiance of the wishes and
resolute opposition of so many of its citizens. But
the transaction would lower the price of whisky and
increase the popularity, power and emoluments of
the physician.

Here is the plan as outlined in the press :

a. That the Internal Revenue Department be
given authority to establish, in all thickly pop-
ulated districts, as many government stations as
may be deemed necessary for the sale of spirits.

b. That the spirits sold by such stations be pur-
chased by the government, tested by the govern-
ment, and be of a uniform quality.

c. That such spirits be sold at a uniform price,
sufficient to cover their cost and the cost of main-
taining the stations, without profit to the govern-
ment.

d. That the Internal Revenue Department
employ at such stations, at such salary as may be
required to obtain them, one or more reputable
physicians who shall have the authority and be
under the duty to issue without charge prescrip-
tions to anyone who may call at the stations and
whom the physicians find to be in need of spirits
or intoxicants for medicinal purposes.

ENFORCEMENT 181

e. That such stations shall also fill all pre-
scriptions issued by physicians duly licensed.

/. That any physician issuing a prescription
for spirits shall immediately file a copy of it with
the government station, so that the latter may at
all times have a complete record of prescriptions
and sales.

g. That the physicians in attendance at the
government stations shall have authority, after
consultation and examination of the patient, to
prescribe a quantity of spirits in excess of that now
provided by law, if in their opinion such action is
necessary.

h. That in widely scattered rural districts
where it would not be practicable for patients to
travel long distances to a central station, prac-
titioners be authorized to purchase from the gov-
ernment at the nearest distributing station such
spirits as they shall deem necessary for the needs
of their patients, and shall be authorized to sell
such spirits at the government fixed price, and
shall be strictly accountable to the government
station for all spirits received by them.

This plan is hardly in accordance with the state-
ment of the medical association that the use of
alcohol in therapeutics has no scientific value. But,
once the Volstead Act has been amended and the

1 82 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

people have become accustomed to obtaining their
whisky through the medical practitioner, there is no
reason why the association should not bring their
position on alcohol up to date. A little thing like
consistency need not trouble them.

Whether any such plan will be put into effect is
more than doubtful. But there is no doubt whatever
about the effect upon the public of certain features of
the enforcement measures. Police officers have been
ordered by their superiors to defy the law in order
to enforce it — a curious paradox in the world's
greatest democracy. The constitutional rights of
citizens have been wilfully and flagrantly violated.
Their homes have been invaded without warrants;
their baggage has been seized and examined; they
have been compelled to submit to offensive and de-
grading personal search. And all this without a
shadow of legal justification. But public opinion
is beginning to make itself felt, and both federal and
local authorities are responding. District attorneys,
mayors and magistrates have in many instances done
their clear duty and insisted that the law shall be
decently observed by its paid defenders. Yet the
real evil lies not in details, but at the very root of the
whole matter. It is inherent in the Eighteenth
Amendment itself, — a deliberate attempt under a
constitutional mask to deprive the people of a nat-
ural and therefore undoubtedly constitutional right.

ENFORCEMENT 183

After such a fundamental act of violence, political
and legal rights must inevitably fall by the way. As
United States Senator Borah said in August, 192 1 :
"It has become almost impossible in certain cases to
enforce the law without disregarding the Constitu-
tion." The "certain cases" may be extended to all
cases, for the spirit of the Constitution, if not the
letter, has been violated by the amendment so un-
scrupulously foisted upon it. Senator Brandegee
said on the same occasion: "If this law cannot be
enforced except by Russian and inquisitorial prac-
tices, it is not a law for the Anglo-Saxon peoples."

The American people will cordially endorse this
statement of a self-evident truth.

In the proceedings in the Senate with regard to the
Willis-Campbell Bill (the Anti-Beer-Prescription
Bill), during which the statements just quoted were
made, an amendment was introduced (the Stanley
Amendment) making it a felony for any govern-
ment officer or agent, state or federal, or any other
person, to search the persons or houses of the people
without a warrant. Heavy penalties were provided
for a violation of the clause. The Senate accepted
the amendment. That may be regarded either as a
simple or an extraordinary thing. In reality it is
both. It is certainly a thing of the utmost and most
obvious simplicity for a branch of the federal legisla-
ture to safeguard the guaranteed constitutional

1 84 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

rights of citizens. But it is an extraordinary thing
that the wanton and contemptuous violation of the
Fourth Amendment to the Constitution by the zeal-
ous partisans of the Eighteenth Amendment should
require a new clause in a new statute if it is to be
coped with effectually. Affairs have come to a
strange pass indeed when the machinery of govern-
ment has to be restrained in this way from selecting
which part of the Constitution it will enforce at any
cost and by any means, and which part it will ignore.
Press comment throughout the country showed a
full appreciation of the gravity and yet grotesqueness
of the issue. The New York World for August 1 1,
1921, said in its leader:

"What the Senate did was merely to revive in
this connection the Fourth Federal Amendment,
binding upon Congress and all officials of the
national government, which reads :

"The right of the people to be secure in their
persons, houses, papers and effects, against un-
reasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon
probable cause, supported by oath or affirma-
tion, and particularly describing the place to be
searched, and the persons and things to be
seized.

"This article of the American Bill of Rights has
been a part of the Constitution since 1791. It

ENFORCEMENT 185

was English law going back to a time before the
American Revolution. It was not superseded or
nullified by the Eighteenth Amendment, which
seems to be the only part of the Constitution com-
manding Mr. Volstead's recognition and respect."

Mr. Volstead, characteristically, had expressed
himself as being grieved at the new clause, which,
if kept in the bill, would be "a big blow to prohi-
bition enforcement." He was not grieved at all by
any blows, however shattering, at the enforcement of
the Constitution, which naturally seems to him a little
thing in comparison with his own peculiar affairs.
Perhaps, remembering that George Washington was
called the Father of his Country, Mr. Volstead may
desire to win the title of stepfather of a changeling.

The New York Tribune said editorially on the
same subject:

"We are too close, perhaps, to what has been
going on among us for the last eight years or so
for the masses of the people to assess the enormity
of the violations by public servants of the guaranty
contained in the Fourth Amendment.

"When historians of this age of 'The New Free-
dom' come to cast up the record they will have
occasion to marvel that a people for whom free-
dom was purchased at such a cost should have
drifted so far from their moorings as to be com-

.186 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

pelled in the month of August, 192 1, to reassert
by statute the right of personal liberty as guar-
anteed in their Constitution."

All this is merely one of the first fruits of prohi-
bition, which is a deliberate attack not only upon our
liberties, but, as I have endeavored to show in these
pages, on the very foundations of our lives.

CHAPTER XXII

GOVERNMENT BY PROPAGANDA?

There was a time, within the memory of many of
us, when the American citizen was free to live his
own life and seek his livelihood, unfettered by con-
tinual government supervision. The administration
of public affairs, so far as it affected the individual
directly, was limited to certain necessary undertak-
ings clearly defined by the Constitution, such as rais-
ing the national revenues, coining money, administer-
ing justice, maintaining a postal system and extending
encouragement to the useful arts and sciences.

The extension of government regulation had its
beginning in the supervision of the business of our
corporations. With the multiplication of govern-
ment bureaus which an unwieldy system of taxation
and other vicious measures have encouraged, a great
network of surveillance has gradually been woven
round our people, until it has now touched even the
home life of the nation. The government bureau,
instead of functioning for the common good, has
fallen into the hands of special interests, which have
used it to further their own ends. So far, these
interests have been able to hold themselves beyond

187

1 88 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

the reach of the law. But prohibition has only been
made possible through a gradual breaking down of
our system of government. The adoption of the
Eighteenth Amendment has now brought to the
people a clear realization that their liberties are
threatened. Whatever the outcome of the liquor
controversy, they will not lose sight of the fact that
the evils which have prepared the way for prohibition
must be rooted out.

Our system of government is supposed to be
founded upon popular representation by geograph-
ical division. When the Constitution was adopted it
was contemplated that the people of the several
states should be free to choose their own representa-
tives. Upon questions of great national importance
states might become grouped on one side or the other
through the mutual sympathies of their peoples, and
thus the feelings and opinions of the inhabitants of
one state might influence the inhabitants of another.
But that is not the case to-day. There are great
organizations, sometimes nation-wide in their activi-
ties and at other times operating in more or less
important sections of the country, throwing their
influence to suit their interest, first in one state, then
in another, and defying the sovereignty of the people
of those states. It may be a union of the employees
of a transcontinental railroad, whose influence may
be felt in any one of a chain of states extending from

GOVERNMENT BY PROPAGANDA? 189

the Atlantic to the Pacific ; or a miners' union, organ-
ized throughout the coalfields of Ohio, Pennsylvania
and West Virginia; or the Anti-Saloon League, an
organization drawing its members from all parts of
the country and leagued with many subsidiary organ-
izations. These unions or societies are organiza-
tions of private citizens, with no lawful political
standing but with great political influence. The
smaller the state in which they are operating the
more this influence is felt. The states of the Union
vary in population from Nevada, with about 120,-
000 people, to New York, with over 10,000,000.
Yet all states are on an equal footing when acting
upon an amendment to the Constitution. That is a
fact with which everybody is quite familiar, but
everybody may not appreciate its significance.

In putting through the Eighteenth Amendment,
the Anti-Saloon League had the support and co-
operation of the National Health bureaus, and
these in turn were controlled by the medical union,
an international organization. Thus, through secret
combinations, even foreign influences were brought
to bear in the making of our laws. This was ac-
complished by the dissemination of propaganda, in
the preparation of which the government bureaus
participated. The Congress was intended to be a
deliberating body. Are we to substitute govern-
ment by propaganda for our original system?

190 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

The success of the prohibition movement has em-
boldened the propagandists. Other attacks upon
our liberties have begun. It is not a case simply of
an anti-tobacco crusade or some similar movement.
There will be plenty of those. But our religious
liberties themselves are to be assailed. The same
methods are to be employed, according to a state-
ment by one of the agitators :

"We shall work in every congressional district
in every state. We shall agitate and spread prop-
aganda, and cause voters to write unceasingly to
their Representative in Congress, until no Con-
gressman who cares to stay in Congress will refuse
to vote for our measures. These were the
methods used by the Anti-Saloon League, and they
were effective."

It is high time these irresponsible organizations
were brought within the control of the law. The
proverb of the wolf in sheep's clothing is as full of
meaning for us to-day at it was in the time of iEsop.
We must recognize the fact that an undertaking
which is begun in all sincerity may fall into the hands
of the unscrupulous, and that high pretensions may
be only a camouflage for sordid motives. If a move-
ment is for the good of the people it will do no harm
to know all about it in the beginning. If these
organizations were required to incorporate and to

GOVERNMENT BY PROPAGANDA? 191

keep an accurate list of their members and contrib-
utors, and the amounts contributed, the press of the
country could be relied upon to do the rest. If it
failed and harm should come, we should at least
know whom to hold accountable. We should not be
obliged to add to the burdens of the taxpayers in
seeking out the names of the supporters of an illegal
undertaking, as in the case of the parlor bolshevists.
Prohibition has already done more harm in this
country than bolshevism ever could do. There may
come a time when we shall be seeking the names of
our parlor prohibitionists.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE WAY OUT

Prohibition has been adopted as a part of the
fundamental law of the land. Every safeguard
which the ingenuity of legal minds could devise has
been placed around it. When we consider that it
will be necessary to obtain the consent of the legisla-
tures (or conventions) of three-fourths of the
several states to undo what has been done, and that
these bodies will be watched and influenced by the
Anti-Saloon League, backed by a vast army of old
and new profiteers and their political allies, the repeal
of the Eighteenth Amendment seems all but impos-
sible. Yet in spite of the strength of its legal posi-
tion, there is a weakness in the very foundation of
prohibition which it has been impossible to rectify.
Once this is understood, it will require only a well-
placed blow to bring the fabric so carefully erected
crumbling down about the heads of its promoters.
As is often the case, when the little minds of men are
pitted against the purposes of nature, a temporary
success has been seized only to make the final discom-
fiture more complete.

192

THE WAY OUT 193

The whole structure of prohibition rests upon the
premise that alcohol is harmful — a habit-forming
drug, a poison — and this conception is maintained by
the government medical bureaus. When we remove
the misguided, inefficient men from our national
health departments and establish an honest and com-
petent service, that service will tell us that alcohol is
necessary, both as food and medicine, to sustain
human life. The Eighteenth Amendment will then
automatically become unconstitutional. No nation,
especially one as large as the United States, can lay
down hard and fast rules for the nourishment of its
people, and survive. To extend governmental reg-
ulation to the foods we eat (except in emergencies
or to ensure pure products) would be contrary to all
American principles and traditions. And not only
would prohibition come to its unregretted end with
the establishment of a sound national health service,
but the way would be cleared for the eradication of
disease, here and throughout the world — tuber-
culosis, influenza, pneumonia and other infections.
That these diseases still prevail is due to the power
of an organization which so far has been able to'
block all improvements in medical treatment, except
those which it could control and so turn to profes-
sional profit. Yet this organization has not been
content with the disastrous influence it already exer-
cises. As Dr. John P. Davin, of New York, says

194 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

in a letter to the New York World of August n,
192 1 : "For a long time the medical politicians who
control the American Medical Association have
aimed at a Cabinet position for one of their number
in a Federal Department of Health." But it is
natural that these "medical politicians" should aim
at a Cabinet position to give them more leverage for
their destructive efforts. Not long ago they were
trying to place one of their organization in the
White House itself. Fortunately, the White House
can still stand for progressiveness, not reaction.

Compare the position of medicine to-day with that
of other sciences. Note some of the great achieve-
ments of mankind in other fields of human endeavor.
Consider only the most recent successes. Man is
able to talk over a wire from New York to San
Francisco and recognize his friend's voice. He has
crossed the broad Atlantic through the air in little
more than a single night. He has harnessed the air
waves to carry the messages of his telegraph and
telephone. He has preserved sound indestructibly
on little discs, so that the great masters of music shall
be indeed immortal and future ages shall still hear
our Carusos and Paderewskis. Curative medicine,
on the other hand, in spite of all we have learned
about disease, stands almost exactly where it did at
the beginning of the Christian era. Have you been
led to believe otherwise, as the result of successful

THE WAY OUT 195

medical propaganda ? Then hear the truth from the
medical text-books:

"We have learned to prevent many diseases by
the elimination of the corresponding infecting
agents from our midst; cholera, plague, typhus
fever, typhoid fever, yellow fever, smallpox, ma-
laria and diphtheria are diseases which, if they still
exist among civilized people, do so with the con-
sent of the people in the face of a full knowledge
of the manner of their prevention.

"Wonderful progress has also been made in sur-
gery. By its means countless lives have been
saved which otherwise would have been doomed.
But, after all, surgical treatment cannot be re-
garded as curative treatment in the proper sense
of the word; the surgeon may amputate a badly
crushed limb or he may remove a diseased ap-
pendix, or a cancerous breast, but he does not cure
the limb, nor the appendix, nor does he restore the
breast to its original condition. The final repair,
the healing of the wound, is accomplished by the
animal body itself. The surgeon, however, is
frequently placed in a position where he can assist
nature materially to accomplish a cure, and in
this respect he is certainly more favorably placed
than the internist.

"The latter may be a most skilful diagnostician,

196 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

an excellent pathologist perhaps, but he does not
cure the diseases with which he is brought into
contact. He may in a measure influence some
diseases by his directions for the general care of
the patient, but as a rule the patient dies or re-
covers irrespective of his therapeutic efforts, in so
far at least as these efforts are based upon ancient
empiricism. Typhoid fever patients still pursue
the same course which was so well described by
the physicians of the mediaeval ages; our pneu-
monia death rate is still what it was when the
earliest records on the subject were kept, and is
virtually the same for the millionaire in his marble
palace, surrounded by doctors and nurses, as for
the tramp who is cared for by the roadside by his
brother tramps. The 'virulence' of an epidemic
of scarlatina or measles may vary, but our death
rate in the long run is virtually the same. Where
actual progress has been made in the treatment of
disease, such progress has been due not to our
therapeutic interference by means of drugs, but to
a recognition, be it ever so slight, of those factors
by which nature herself, unaided and at the same
time unhampered by empirical drug treatment,
seeks to accomplish that end. For after all, the
very thing which physicians have sought to ac-
complish in all the centuries that have passed, viz.,
the cure of disease, that very thing nature has

THE WAY OUT 197

accomplished by herself, before our very eyes,
countless millions of times.

"Nature herself cures 75 per cent, of the pneu-
monia cases, while the physician fails to cure any,
for surely he cannot claim as his own what nature
does, and he evidently loses the 25 per cent, that
nature also loses."*

Organized Medicine obtained its power as the
result of the high pretensions of medical ethics — uthe
services it can render to humanity." Through this
plea it has been able to consolidate the most powerful
organization of modern times; an organization
which would not be permitted to exist except for its
avowed purpose, the advancement of science and the
welfare of the human race. A British courtf has
recently swept away the gloss and pretence surround-
ing medical ethics, and they stand revealed as the
private rules of an international association of in-
dividuals who are letting themselves for hire — rules
which have no foundation, in this country at least,
in national laws and which are contrary to the spirit
of the Constitution of the United States.

The American branch of this association is organ-

* "Infection and Immunity : A Text-Book of Immunology
and Serology"; Simon, pp. 18, 19.

t High Court of Justice, King's Bench Division. Pratt
and Others vs. The British Medical Association and Others.
(1919.) 1 K. B. 244.

198 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

ized along the same lines as the Workmen's and
Soldiers' Councils of Russia. Their governing body
consists of delegates from constituent associations,
scientific sections, and medical departments of the
United States Government. While it is not per-
mitted to the employees of the postal service to
organize and send their delegates to the meetings of
the American Federation of Labor, the Public
Health Service and other medical departments of
the government are privileged to send their repre-
sentatives to the House of Delegates of the medical
union because it poses as a scientific body.

The association has also established connections
with many of our great universities through their
medical colleges. The medical college is, in a
measure, independent of the control of the university
trustees and subject to the rules of the medical as-
sociation. It is, nevertheless, an integral part of the
university and as such is entitled to all the prestige
which the name can command.

The endorsement and assistance which the associa-
tion has thus, indirectly, been able to obtain from the
government and the universities has been a great
help to the organization in spreading its propaganda
among the people, and in its conflict with the newer
schools of medicine. But the most important and
sinister exercise of its power has been in the use
which the association 'has made of the university and

THE WAY OUT 199

other institutions to control the course of medical
progress.

Medicine is not a simple science where progress
can be made along a given line. It embraces many
subservient sciences — anatomy, physiology, pa-
thology, bacteriology, chemistry, serology, etc. — one
often specially dependent upon another. The very
complexity of the science has laid it open to bureau-
cratic exploitation. If something new in any of the
subservient sciences was discovered which appeared
to be against the interests of the association or which
they were unable to control, it was a simple matter
to refer it to one of the government bureaus, which
promptly passed it on to a college or some other insti-
tution, where it was pigeonholed. If the matter was
ever called to public attention, the mere fact that the
government and a great university had had the op-
portunity to pass upon it and had dropped it was
sufficient to condemn it in the public eye. Perhaps
the reader will have a better understanding of the
workings of the system if it is shown in operation.

When the great influenza pandemic was taking its
heavy toll from our population, there was a general
discussion of the bacteriology of the disease. In-
spired articles on the value of an influenza serum
appeared in the newspapers, and bills were intro-
duced into Congress to appropriate a large sum for
the purpose of isolating the germ which was causing

200 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

the havoc. Long before the infection reached
America an accurate knowledge of the disease had
been obtained through private experiments and an
effective treatment perfected. These experiments
had shown that serum was of little or no value in the
treatment of this type of infection. Full information
was laid before the government bureaus. In spite of
this, the authorities went ahead with their plans for
the production of a serum. Although it was entirely
experimental, the serum was sold in large quantities
throughout the country. After a year's trial it was
pronounced worthless. If the serum had been a
patent medicine, put out by a pharmaceutical house,
its promoters would have been called to account.
But it was a "scientific" effort and the unfortunates
who died as a result of using a worthless remedial
agent became victims to the advancement of
"science." As for the other treatment, it was passed
from one government bureau to another. It finally
brought up in the Influenza Committee of the Public
Health Service and was by them referred to the
Harvard Medical School. That was the last heard
of it.

An American chemist discovered a process for the
improvement of a well-known drug. This chemical
was recognized by physicians throughout the world
as a valuable treatment for pneumonia. Many of
the drugs of the pharmacopoeia have been improved

THE WAY OUT 201

and refined from time to time. In this particular
case, the form of the drug most used in America was
manufactured under a process which had been dis-
covered in a ,German laboratory. The American
chemist's process was so far an improvement on the
German that injurious constituents, amounting to 20
per cent, which were present in the German product,
were removed without detracting from the thera-
peutic value of the finished product. The drug in
its refined form was much more effective in its com-
binations with other chemicals with which it was
usually prescribed.

The chemist took his product to the American
Medical Association. He gave his formula. The
parent drug was listed in the United States Pharma-
copoeia and also known by its chemical symbols. To
illustrate we will call it —

A6B2(CD4)(NO)X3(YZ)

The process removed certain poisons represented
by, let us say, NO. The chemist's formula there-
fore was —

A6B2 (CDJ (NO) X3 (YZ) — (NO)

or

A6B2(CD4)XS(YZ)

This did not satisfy the medical association. They
demanded to know how the poisons, NO, were
extracted. The chemist was in a quandary. If he

202 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

made his process public, he would first have to patent
it or surrender his only asset, which had cost him a
small fortune and years of labor. His product
would then become a patent medicine and subject to
the virulent attack of all the medical journals con-
trolled by the association. If he refused, although
every chemical molecule in the refined drug was
known, it became a secret medicine condemned by the
ethics of the profession. After a protracted corre-
spondence the process was refused. The association
then published in its Journal 2l report condemning the
product, and this was mailed to every one of its
members.

The Constitution of the United States provides
(Article I, Section 8) —

"The Congress shall have power —
"To promote the progress of science and useful
arts, by securing for limited times to authors and
inventors the exclusive right to their respective
writings and discoveries."

So far as this concerns medicine, it has been made
a mockery of by the medical union, as have also the
pure food laws.

But the chemist was not to be baffled. He had
influential friends and he proceeded to introduce his
product. The value of his discovery was confirmed
by the splendid results obtained by independent physi-

THE WAY OUT 203

cians in their daily practice. When the United
States entered the war, the new drug was offered to
the government, not as so many profiteers were
offering their wares, but at cost. But the govern-
ment bureaucrats had been warned, and they refused
the offer. The chemist persisted. It was politely
suggested that he take the matter up with the Rocke-
feller Institute. This he did, but it availed nothing.
His experience at the institute would fill a chapter in
itself. As a last resort, he determined to try what
political influence would do. Two men, high in
government circles, were approached, and they con-
sented to help. Then, and only then, did the govern-
ment bureaus become interested. They saw that
they had a determined man to deal with, and they
finally agreed to take the matter under advisement.
The chemist was directed to send his product to the
College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia Uni-
versity, to be tested. There a worthless test and a
worthless report were made, and that ended the mat-
ter. It was a coincidence that the chemist had grad-
uated years before from the same university's Col-
lege of Pharmacy.

Is it plain now how this system works? Any
matter which might cause the association concern or
make trouble for its agents in the government bu-
reaus can always be disposed of by referring it to a
reputable institution. And if someone in that insti-

204 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

tution is "careless" or "inattentive to his duties" and
makes a blunder, it in no way reflects on the officer
of the government or his association.

Do you think the mother in far off Kansas, when
she received the War Department's telegram that
her boy was down with pneumonia in a Texas camp,
cared whether the medicine they were giving him
was manufactured under a German patent or an
American patent, whether it was ethical or unethical,
as long as it was the best that science could produce?
It was her boy's life she wanted; nothing else mat-
tered to her. And the colonels of the medical corps,
who have held their positions because they were will-
ing to do their union's bidding, did they tell that
mother that everything possible was being done for
her boy, or did they tell her the truth, that no matter
how her son fared, union rules must be observed?
The Patent Office was established as much for the
benefit of our people as for the protection of our
authors and inventors. America is entitled to the
best efforts of all her citizens, no matter who they are
or what their calling.

We have often cause to wonder at the wisdom of
the farseeing statesmen who laid the foundations of
our government. It is our good fortune that we
have, in addition to our great state papers, a volu-
minous record of the thoughts of these illustrious
men. It seems as if almost every contingency which

THE WAY OUT 205

we have had to meet in recent years has been covered
in their writings. It was the concentration of power
in the federal bureaus which made prohibition pos-
sible. Thomas Jefferson, in his first annual message
to Congress, warned the people against these federal
offices.

uWhen we consider that this government is
charged with the external and mutual relations
only of these states; that the states themselves
have principal care of our persons, our property,
and our reputation, constituting the great field of
human concerns ; we may well doubt whether our
organization is not too complicated, too expensive ;
whether offices and officers have not been multi-
plied unnecessarily and sometimes injuriously to
the service they were meant to promote."*

At any rate, if we must have officials and bureaus,
let us take good care that they are as efficient as
possible. As soon as we have a national health
service that is concerned wholly with the interests of
the public, and not with those of any domineering
professional association, the first great step in the
cause of constitutional liberty will have been taken.
For prohibition will end.

* Thomas Jefferson. First Annual Message, December 8,
1 801.

CHAPTER XXIV

CONCLUSION

There is much to be learned, and not about
alcohol alone, from the prohibition controversy.
Nothing in recent years has brought us more squarely
face to face with our shortcomings. We have held
our form of government high among the democratic
nations of the earth ; yet representative government
is a failure when controlled by fanatical ignorance.
There is no despotism worse than that of an ignorant
democracy.

The prohibition movement found us destitute of
any real knowledge of alcohol. It found us ignorant
or careless, in far too many instances, on the subject
of natural laws, economics, and other fundamentals.
It has shown us so ignorant of history, even that of
our own country, that we have been unable to profit
by the past experience of former generations of
Americans. It is only human to err, but the success-
ful man is the one who profits by experience and does
not fall into the same mistake a second time. This

is as true of a nation as of an individual.

206

CONCLUSION 207

The history of prohibition goes back three thou-
sand years. In our own country it goes back almost
three hundred. Early American records show that
in 1663 the Governor of Delaware prohibited distill-
ing and brewing in that colony. From then until
now prohibition has been agitated periodically in the
United States. As with the perpetual motion
machine and other interesting or irritating obses-
sions, there has always been someone ready to ex-
ploit the prohibition fallacy as soon as the public
recovered from their last experience. Some-
times it has been the professional reformer, looking
for a little easy money; at others the visionary
fanatic, too much impressed by the importance of his
own idea, and too little interested in America to
study her history. The usual crowd-elements have
joined the movement, attracted by its presumed
idealism, or the opportunities for profit, or the mere
desire to be associated with agitation and action.

Many of our most distinguished statesmen have
gone on record against this class of legislation.
Abraham Lincoln's statement, made in the contro-
versy of 1840, is one of the notable examples. He
said:

"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause
of temperance. It is a species of intemperance
within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of

208 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

reason, in that it attempts to control a man's ap-
petite by legislation and makes a crime out of
things that are not crimes. A prohibition law
strikes a blow at the very principles on which our
government was founded."*

There is a whole volume of scientific facts con-
densed into these few words.

Between 1851 and 1855 a substantial part of the
United States adopted prohibition — the New Eng-
land States, New York and Delaware or the Middle
States, and Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Mich-
igan of the Middle West, with the territory of
Nebraska. These states contained about forty-eight
per cent, of the population of the entire country. We
need no stronger proof of the failure of prohibition
as a temperance measure than the history of that
period.

Before this time, from 18 17 to 1850, there had

been no tax on alcoholic liquors. Good whisky sold

at wholesale at twenty-five cents a gallon. It was on

sale in the groceries and other stores throughout the

country. The whisky barrel on tap with the tin cup

hanging beside it was a familiar sight in the country

store. Under such conditions temperance is a virtue.

And the American people made it so, for during the

* Congressional Record, Sixty-third Congress, Third Ses-
sion, p. 629.

CONCLUSION 209

system of free whisky the per capita consumption was
gradually decreased.

A great change came with prohibition. In 1850
our population numbered 23,191,876 and the total
consumption of spirits was 51*833,473 gallons. In
i860 the population had increased 36 per cent, to
31,443,321, while the total consumption of spirits,
in spite of the prohibition enactments, increased 73
per cent, to 89,968,651 gallons. During this period
the consumption of wines also increased, while that
of malt liquors was more than doubled.

The failure of prohibition in the 'fifties has been
attributed by the prohibitionists to lack of legal
means of enforcement, and they have used it as an
argument for constitutional prohibition. To prove
the possibility of total abstinence they point to the
Mohammedans, also to the North American Indians
who had never used alcohol until the white man
brought his firewater to this continent. They cite
these cases as examples of peoples that have existed
for generations without alcohol. The fact that a
people have never used alcoholic liquor or have been
able to give it up is not an argument for prohibi-
tion. Let us look below the surface. Compare
the industries of these people with our own great
industrial development. Where were the brass fac-
tories in Connecticut before the coming of the Eng-
lish? How do the manufactures of Mohammedan

210 THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

countries compare with those of Europe and Amer-
ica? How does the business life of some of the
Asiatic nations contrast with ours? The telegraph,
the telephone, the typewriter, the adding machine
and all the other labor-saving devices have been
invented to simplify our business methods, but they
have not lessened the burdens of our industrial work-
ers. We have simply taken advantage of every
time-saving invention to multiply our activities. Our
corporations are larger, our enterprises greater and
our fortunes more colossal. It is the life we are
leading that has made prohibition impossible in
America. If the nation really wants prohibition
there is no reason why it should not have it, if it is
ready to pay the price and suffer the penalties * —
and providing we are willing to adopt the standard

* Many of the plagues that have swept over the earth had
their origin and acquired their virulence among the prohi-
bition peoples of Asia, who have suffered far more from
disease than the Western nations. Of course, other condi-
tions must be considered, besides prohibition; but the facts
are instructive. In spite of their leisurely, easy-going exist-
ence, the average span of life among the inhabitants of India
and China is only about half our own. Compared with the
Western nation's average of from thirty-six to fifty-six years,
we find an average lifetime in India of from nineteen to
twenty-one years, and from twenty-two to twenty-five years
in China. To illustrate their weakness when attacked by
disease: in some prohibition countries the mortality from
influenza during the great pandemic was over five times the
American death rate.

CONCLUSION 211

of living of a prohibition people. But let us look
squarely at our problem, with a full realization of
what real prohibition will mean; for it is impossible
to change a nation's whole mode of existence by
the passage of one prohibitory law.

There is no virtue in any controversy unless we
seek the truth. And to this end, if we wish to have
a better understanding of the whole subject of pro-
hibition, we must first have a better understanding
of alcohol itself — its uses and abuses. We must
discard any false impressions acquired from passing
observation of the drunkard of the saloon and set
ourselves to learning the body's natural needs, not
in the seclusion of the laboratory but in the every-
day life of the American people.

INDEX

Adamson Law, 165
Alcohol and auto-intoxication,
78 sqq.

— and efficiency, 67, 68

— and fatigue, 113 sqq., 127

— and golf, 119 sqq.

— and grain conservation, 136
sqq.

— and immigration, 52

— and insanity, 63, 64, 65

— and longevity, 50, 51, 69
sqq.

— and religion, 13 sqq.

— and suicide, 65, 66

— as a medicine, 104 sqq.

— as a restorative, compared
with nature, 72, 73

— as a stimulant, 105, 113,
117, 118

— food value of, 15, 46, 47, 97
sqq., 133

— traffic, mortality statistics,
75, 76

Alcoholic beverages, importation
statistics, 143, 144, 145

Alcoholism in New York and
Brooklyn, 175, 176

"Alcohol — Its Relation to Hu-
man Efficiency and Lon-
gevity," vii, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62,

75, 137, 169
American Federation of Labor,

53, 134, 198

American Medical Association,
viii, 17, 18, 20, 22 sqq., 37,
38, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49,

54, 55, 59, "2, 124, 194,
201, 202

A. M. A., Committee on Legis-
lation, 47

A. M. A., House of Delegates,

39, 198

— Journal, 202

— Resolution condemning al-
cohol, 39, 46, 47, 58

Anderson, W. H., 57
Antibodies, 35, 42, 43, 60, 109,

no, III
Anti-Saloon League, 56, 57, 154,

173, 189, 192
Appleton's Medical Dictionary,

32
Arnold, Dr. Alma C, 31, 95
Aronovitch, Dr., 114
Arrests for alcoholism in New

York, 175
Aschaffenberg, Dr., 67
Auto-intoxication, 78 sqq.

Behring, Dr., 23, 25

Bell, Sir Robert, 33

Bellevue Hospital, 176

Bennett, Arnold, 123

Borah, Senator, 183

Bordet, Dr., 23

Boston Medical and Surgical

Journal, 83
Boyd, Frank L., 177
Brandegee, Senator, 183
Bremer County case, 163
Brewers' Board of Trade, 136
British Medical Association, 197
British Munition Workers'

Health Committee, 127
Bryan, Wm. J., 57
Bureau of Animal Industry, 32

Camp Whitman, 32

Cana, 14

Canadian Government, 34

213

214

INDEX

Carrel, Dr. A., 88
Champagne, effect of, 60, 61
Chemotherapy, 36 sqq.
Cicero, 73

Cider making, 90, 91
Cincinnati City Hospital, 33
Cincinnati Enquirer, 33
Cleveland, house shortage in,

133. 134
Cobb, Irvin S., 170
Columbia University, 146

College of Physicians

and Surgeons, 203
Department of Physiol-
ogy, 114
Concentration camps, in, 128,

129
Congressional Record, 208
Council of National Defence,

Medical Section, in
Currency inflation, 141

"Darwinism and Race Prog-
ress," 64
Davin, Dr. John P., 65, 193
Declaration of Independence, 46
"De Senectute," 73
Devonport, Lord, 127
Diphtheria antitoxin, 25
Douglas, Dr., 23

East and West, contrasted, 209,

210
Ehrlich, Prof. Paul, 23, 35 sqq.
Ehrlich's side-chain theory, $5

sqq., 108
Ethics, medical code of, 23,

24
Exchange depreciation, 141, 142

Farmers' Bulletin, 32
Fatigue and alcohol, 113 sqq.

— and disease, 123 sqq.

— toxins, 114

Federal prohibition director,

Illinois, 48
Fees, medical, 40
Fillinger, Dr., 60
Fisher, Prof. Irving, 57

Fisk, Dr. Eugene L., vii, viii, 13,
58, 59, 60, 62, 65, 67, 73,
75, 76, 78, 80, 136, 138, 169

Foot and mouth disease, 32, 34

Fourteenth Regiment, N. Y. N.
G, 32

Fourth Amendment, 184, 185

Gallipoli, 33

Georgia and the Anti-Saloon

League, 56, 57
Germicide, practical, 36 sqq.,

108, 109
Golf and alcohol, 119 sqq.
Gompers, Samuel, 134
Grain conservation and alcohol,

136 sqq.
"Greenback" party, 140

Hall, Prof., W. S., 85

Hare, Dr., 106

Harvard Medical School, 200

Hippocrates, 26

Hobson, R. P., 57, 147

House of Commons, 33

House of Representatives, Ap-
propriations Committee, 17

"Human Machine and Industrial
Efficiency, The," 124

Hunter, Arthur, 50

Illinois, federal prohibition di-
rector in, 48

"Immortality of the Cells and
Tissues," 89

Imports of alcoholic beverages,

143, 144, 145
Indiana State Penitentiary, 172
Infantile paralysis, 32
Infection, explanation of, 42, 43
"Infection and Immunity," 197
Influenza Committee, Public

Health Service, 200
Influenza epidemic, in, 112,

126, 157, 158
Insanity and alcohol, 63, 64, 65
Internal Revenue Department,

180
Iowa Supreme Court, 163
Israelites, 14, 15

INDEX

215

Jacobi, Dr. Abram, 80
Jefferson, Thomas, 205
Johnson, "Pussyfoot," 57
Journal of A. M. A., 202
Journal of Experimental Med-
icine, 88

Kings County Hospital, 176

Labor unionism, 159 sqq.
Law of Moses, 13, 14, 15
Lee, Dr., 114, 124
Leslie's Weekly, 176
Life average in China, 210

— in India, 210
Life Extension Institute, 59

Hygiene Reference Board,

59, 62
Life insurance companies, 17, 18,

49, 50, 62, 68, 75, 169
Lincoln, Abraham, 207
Liquor trade mortality statis-
tics, 75, 76
Loyster, James A., 31

Manchester weavers, 44

Mayo, Dr. Charles H., 39

"Medical Ethnology," 81

Medical ethics, 23, 24

Medical fees, 40

Medical Record, N. Y., 81, 89

Medical Section, Council of Na-
tional Defence, in

"Medical Student's Manual of
Chemistry," 61

Metchnikoff, Prof., 23, 78

Moran, Wm. H., 171

Mullan-Gage Act, 147

Munition Workers' Health Com-
mittee, British, 127

Nain, 14

Nation, Carrie, 179

National Health Service, 189,
198

Nature's process of fertility re-
newal, 72, 73

Neo-Salvarsan, 37

N. Y. Health Department, 32, 33

N. Y. Herald, 31

N. Y. Life Insurance Co., 50

N. Y. Medical Record, 81, 89

N. Y. Tribune, 185

N. Y. World, 33, 65, 184, 194

Nutrition Laboratory, Boston, 67

Occupational hazards (alco-
hol), 75

Paget, Sir James, 124
Paratyphoid fever, 32
Pasteur, Dr., 22, 23
Patent medicines, 26, 27, 28, 37,

38
Pfeiffer, Dr., 23
Philippines, alcohol and U. S.

troops, 81, 82
Plumb plan, 161, 165
Police court statistics, N. Y.

City, 175
"Practical Therapeutics," 106
Pratt case, 197
Prohibition and labor, 51, 52, 53,

133, 134

— cost of, 147, 154

— history of, in U. S. A., 173
sqq., 207, 208

— in the South, 17, 56, 57

— loss of revenue through,
146

Proverbs (quoted), 104
Public Health Service, 189, 198
Influenza Committee, 200

Reid, G. Archdall, 64
Religion and alcohol, 13 sqq.
Rockefeller family, 18, 54

— Institute, 54, 203

— John D., 55
Roosevelt, Theodore, 158

St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Wash-
ington, D. C, 63
Saleeby, Dr. C. W, 139, 140
Salvarsan, 37
Save-a-Life League, 66
Secret Service Bureau, 171
Seligman, Prof. E. R. A., 146

2l6

INDEX

Senate Finance Committee, 146

Serum therapy, 23, 30 sqq.

Shevlin, Jas. F., 177

Simon, Dr., 197

Sing Sing prison, 172

Society for the Study of In-
ebriety, 63

Sorensen, Dr., 138

Stamp Act, 174

Standard Oil Co., 17, 54, 55

Stanley Amendment, 183

Stedman's Medical Dictionary,
97

Suicide and alcohol, 65, 66

Supreme Court, Iowa, 163
— U. S. A., 11, 46, 47, 112,
149

Training camps, 111, 128, 129
"Triangle of Health, The," 31,

95.
Typhoid fever, 32

U. S. Army Reports, 32

Vaccination, 31, 32, 33
Volstead Act, 147, 171, 172, 178,
179, 181

— Committee, 57

— Representative, 185

Washington, George, 185
Weichardt, Dr., 114
Weigert's law of regeneration,

no
Weinberg, Dr., 60
Wheeler, Wayne B., 57
Whisky treatment in influenza

cases, in, 112
White, Dr. Wm. A., 63
Willis-Campbell Bill, 183
Wilson, Woodrow, 124, 125
Witthaus, Dr., 61
Women's Christian Temperance

Union, 27
Woodruff, Dr. Chas. E., 80, 81
Wright, Dr., 23

\9»*

p.?*

.LJBRARY OF CONGRESS

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